There's news in the zooming career of Oscar Tuazon, an artist who grew up in Indianola, went to school at Cooper Union, for a while came back and lived in Tacoma and named his daughter Tacoma, then moved to Paris: He's now one of three finalists for a commission in an empty lot across from the Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis.

What will he propose for the "temporary, largely self-sustaining construction, landscape strategy, or other similar intervention" when the plans are unveiled publicly July 30? He's the only individual artist on the list; the other finalists are design collective Rebar and collaborative Freecell Architecture.

Recall the Invasion of Elar in Seattle in 2008, when Tuazon and his brother, Eli Hansen, had simultaneous shows at Howard House, Seattle Art Museum, and Western Bridge.

Since then, they've each fully launched individually. Hansen's launch would look spectacular if Tuazon's weren't so freaking world-dominating—Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, London, et cetera.

These are interesting artists, yes, but their appeal is also easily understood considering a contemporary art world hungry to escape its own outsized commercialism and uncomfortably in-built individualism, and its current love affair with communalist utopias—for better and worse. Hansen and Tuazon are tough, hippie, theoretical, sensual, eco, communitarian, working-class-signifyin'.

Their SAM installation was based on a hut they traveled way out to punishingly remote Kodiak, Alaska, and built. Other pieces were inspired by hanging out with a pair of liberationists who live way off the grid in Oregon. At Brooklyn Bridge Park, Tuazon's created People, three sculptures using trees: a tree that becomes a fountain, a tree that becomes a room, and a tree that holds up a handball wall and a basketball hoop. People is up through October.

On the occasion of People opening, Tuazon gave a performance/poem/talk/slideshow at the New School, video below. The talk was "not what we expected," said the curator. It is pretty much entirely a talk about sex. A chair is bisexual. He, Tuazon, is "some wet and unfortunate fuck thing." Poetry readings are painfully full of men comparing themselves to penises. I was grateful when, after he finished, Tuazon laughed and said, "That was fun," as if it had at least somewhat been an act.