Tell Everyone That You're Smiling
One of the most unambiguous aspects of Tyler Cufley's artwork is its problematic relationship to authenticity and production. There are several paradoxes at work that shape how his images are read and how his function as creator is understood. Our familiarity with the content he chooses obscures any overt doings of the artist, since automatic recognition waives any close scrutiny of its mechanisms. This transparency relies on a laboriously rendered façade — something made to be so uniform and complete that its makings escape notice.
Likewise, the visual material Cufley draws upon might best be understood in the context of "found objects," because he unapologetically samples from a very public store of imagery and reassigns meaning according to new associations. Subject and image no longer hold their singularity but dissolve into a heterogeneous visual matrix. The implications are that seeing and remembering perpetually mimic each other, and we can no longer distinguish the reflection from the original.
— Omar Vera, 2006
“I'm pummeled with crisscrossing thin diagonals over a looser vertical grain, like rain-streaked windows. These wet argyle socks are fascinating in their subtleties and control.”