The Paris Review

For this portfolio, guest curator Lauren Cornell has chosen the work of two young artists who began showing around a decade ago in San Francisco. Both work most often in two dimensions, mainly on paper, and both make use of what could be called “found traditions”: modernist design and typography for Tauba Auerbach, Victorian realism for Colter Jacobsen. 



For her Shatter series Tauba lays down a panel and then, over that, a sheet of glass and then, over that, a sheet of cardboard. Then she shatters the glass in one blow, removes the cardboard and, lifting each shard one by one, she fills each space, with either black-and-white or color. She establishes a system, but then what is unleashed is spontaneous and chaotic. Each piece is produced by the frisson between chance and order.