Called an "interdisciplinary gospel immortalist" by Kembra Pfahler of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Tyler Matthew Oyer is an artist, writer, organizer, musician and educator based in Los Angeles. Their work reconsiders the past as something not gone, but as material and ideas that live in and through us, shaping how we see ourselves and our world.
Tyler’s work has been presented at MoMA PS1, REDCAT, The Getty Museum, dOCUMENTA (13), Hammer Museum, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Kunstnernes Hus Oslo, Munch Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach, Bergen Kunstall, Rogaland Kunstsenter, Shedhalle Zürich, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, High Desert Test Sites, Highways Performance Space, Human Resources Los Angeles, Silencio Paris, MIX NYC, Ekebergparken Oslo, Surge Festival Madrid, Lukiškiu Kalėjimas Vilnius, and the Orange County Museum of Art.
They have written works of performance including CALLING ALL DIVAS, GONE FOR GOLD, Shimmy Shake Earthquake, La Bola Negra, and 100 Years of Noise: Beyoncé is ready to receive you now.
In addition to their work as a visual and performing artist, they have released original music albums: RELEASE DELUXE (2017), NO TEMPLE (2020), RETEMPLE (2020), TENDERNESS (2022), and BERLIN ALIEN (2023).
Their feature film adaptation of Charles Ludlam's Conquest of the Universe or When Queens Collide premiered in 2017 and is the first moving-image adaptation of Ludlam’s work.
Tyler is the founder of tir journal, an online platform for queer, feminist, and underrepresented voices.
Tyler received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2012 and has offered workshops and lectures at CalArts, Bard College, Occidental College, University of Southern California Santa Barbara, Penn State University, Southern Exposure, and Grand Central Art Center.
Their work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Nevada Museum of Art, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona and several private collections worldwide.
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photo: Paul Mpagi Sepuya
painting: Constance Tenvik