Tucker Stilley at Artist Curated Projects

Eve Fowler’s house has been invaded by the effervescent and garrulous art of Tucker Stilley. Across the walls, behind the door, up on the ceiling; everywhere one looks there are more of Stilley’s printed digital drawings, his reams of stream-of-consciousness and appropriated text, and foreboding pixelated images of eyes. Three tall wooden panels, pasted with collaged patterns, cracked CDs and more eyes are like Rauschenbergs gone digital.

There is so much work here that it is hard to look at any of it in detail, isolated from its cacophonous context. It is even harder when one learns that Stilley has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and that he is almost entirely paralyzed. The work on display has mostly been made using a system known as ‘eyetracking’, whereby he moves a mouse with his eyeball – by looking at different parts of a screen.

The exhibition is part of Fowler’s Artist Curated Projects, and is curated by Stilley’s friends Sam Durant, Randi Malkin Steinberger and Kate Brown, with precise instructions from Stilley whose condition prevents him from traveling to the show in person.

The distinctive effect is very much like what one, in other circumstances, might call the artist’s ‘hand’; Stilley’s signature mark is frantic, electric, and rapid. Many of these works belong to his ‘Soul-Prisoners’ series, in which he draws over and manipulates criminal mugshots sourced online. Elsewhere, more restrained black and white works were made by tracking the movement of Stilley’s eyeball over hours, days or even weeks. He apparently designed much of the software himself.