Born in New York in 1957, Oursler received a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1979. In 1999 the Williams College Museum of Art organized "Introjection," a mid-career survey of his work, which traveled to the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Des Moines Art Center. In 1999 Dia produced
Fantastic Prayers, a collaborative artwork on CD-ROM, by Oursler, Constance De Jong, and Stephen Vitiello.