Tony Tasset USA, b. 1960

Spew (193) marks a breakthrough moment in Tony Tasset's evolution as an artist. It was the first time he used himself in his work, a practice to which he would return frequently in later years. This image captures him in the act of spitting chocolate syrup, a liquid that was often substituted for blood in old black and white movies. (It was most famously used in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.) Tasset used the act of spitting as a form of mark making. He has described it as belonging in the family of famous artistic expressions from art history, such as Jackson Pollock's dripping paint, Richard Serra throwing hot lead, or Salvador Dali jumping in the air with milk and a cat.

Artist Biography:
Tony Tasset’s work was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial of American Art and is included in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and several other important institutions. Tasset has received the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award, among others. His large-scale sculptures dot the landscape of dozens of America’s beloved public spaces, including the Art Trail at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the lot of Sony Pictures Studios in California, and public plazas in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and many other cities. Tasset is an emeritus professor at University of Illinois- Chicago.