TASMAN RICHARDSON
"While Plato argued for the triumph of the rational over the sensorial, Richardson appears more interested in rehabilitating the latter."
Madeline Bogoch, Peripheral Review
"...akin to a journey through the heart of the materialist ego where the rigorous staging of space diversifies perspectives on the self and the media as portents of an apocalypse..."
Dominique Sirois-Rouleau, Esse
"...Richardson pushes past the surface, and shows us darkness at its heart."
Murray Whyte, Toronto Star
"His investigation of images tests the limits of our cultural and perceptual boundaries, which he breaks apart and reconfigures with disturbing precision."
David Jager, NOW magazine
"Eschewing simulated realities, and narrative or figurative content, Richardson's pioneering of the Jawa style took video sampling to an extreme."
Christopher McKinnon, Luma Quarterly
"...an intense, ambitious artist at the top of his game."
Richard Rhodes, Canadian Art
Tasman Richardson began in 1996 by pioneering his audio/visual cut up method known as Jawa. He co-founded the FAMEFAME media arts collective in 2002 and launched the international a/v tournament Videodrome with cohorts Jubal Brown, Elenore Chesnutt, and Josh Avery. In 2011 he launched the international, live, abstract, anonymous showcase The New Flesh.
His work expanded to installation with his 2000 sq ft Necropolis, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, 2012, Karsh-Masson, Ottawa, 2015. He bookended his critique of mediated gaze with the 2000 sq ft Kali Yuga, Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal, 2019, Toronto 2020.
His themes to date have been a critical response to recordings which he dubbed "contemporary necromancy", social media as a "voluntary surveillance state", and video as "a soul without a body".
The collected observations of over two decades of experimenting with media art are published by Impulse(b) as autobiographical anecdotes in the book Objects In Mirror launched in Toronto, Berlin, and Izmir in 2023.
2024 CV of selected exhibitions
Objects In Mirror published by Impulse(b)