“The Schizophrenic Bomb: Richard Tyler and the Uranian Press” Exhibition

“The Schizophrenic Bomb: Richard Tyler and the Uranian Press” Exhibition

Printed Matter, Inc.

This event has ended.

Printed Matter presents The Schizophrenic Bomb: Richard Tyler and the Uranian Press, the first extensive survey of published work from artist and printmaker Richard Oviet Tyler (1926-1983). In collaboration with Uranian Phalanstery director Medi Matin, and with the support of Steven Kasher Gallery, the exhibition presents dozens of publications and related artifacts from the under-known downtown artist and Uranian Phalanstery co-founder R.O. Tyler.

Born in Lansing, Michigan, Tyler was conscripted into military service during World War II while still a teenager. By September, 1945, he was in Tokyo to witness the devastating aftermath of US firebombing, and registered the psychic trauma wreaked by history’s first atomic detonation over a civilian population in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following the war, Tyler worked as an illustrator for the army newspaper and took odd jobs, returning to the States at the end of his service contract and enrolling at the Chicago Institute of Fine Art on the GI Bill. Here in 1956 he met his wife, the painter, sculptor and filmmaker Dorothea Baer.

Tyler and Baer moved to New York and Tyler worked as a graphic artist (for Playboy magazine, among others) and as an instructor at SVA and CUNY. From an early stage he was also situated in a burgeoning downtown art scene anchored out of Judson Memorial Church, and in October 1959 helped establish the Judson Gallery along with artists Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine and Phyllis Yampolsky. Oldenburg’s famous Ray Gun Show was held in that space several months later, and he executed his first performance Snapshots from the City there shortly after that. It was a moment when Oldenberg and Dine were poised to break onto the scene and Tyler, though not himself a ‘happenings’ artists, turned to an art practice spanning experimental performance, music-making, and publishing/printing that was committed to an existential life-as-art doctrine.

Media

• Illustration

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