Tyler COBURN

Profile

Born in the United States. Lives and works in New York. Graduated with a MFA in Art from the University of Southern California, Roski School of Art and Design in 2012.
Coburn has presented work at Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Bergen Kunsthall; Hayward Gallery, London; Para Site, Hong Kong; and Art Sonje Center, Seoul.

Recent exhibitions:
2022 “Hello, Robot," Vitra Design Museum, Rheims, France
2021 “vogliamo tutto”, OGR, Turin, Italy
2019 “What We Mean By Freedom,” Kunstverein Bielefeld, Germany
2018 “On Circulation”, Bergen Kunsthall, Norway
2016 “The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?)”, The 11th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea

Recent Publishments and Other Works:
2022 “Solitary”, co-published by Sternberg Press, London, and Art Sonje Center, Seoul
2019 “Richard Roe”, published by Sternberg Press, London
2017 Web Platform “Memory Machine,” commissioned by Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong

About works / performance

Coburn's practice spans writing, sound, performance, and many other media. Its subjects are diverse and may, at times, seem unrelated: botany, the law, ergonomics, museums … However, there’s something that connects them, which he owes to growing up in a house with a storyteller for a mother. His artwork tells stories. Stories about characters caught within institutional machinery, like the legal person “Richard Roe” or the people of “The Petrified,” stuck on view in museums. He builds his stories from topics in contemporary discourse. In return, he hopes they add something to the conversation—that his characters can offer intimate ways of thinking through the complexities of our age.