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Neo-Sincerity: The Difference Between Comic and
Cosmic is a Single Letter, currently at Apex Art,
contains a selection of over 22 artists who use
humor in their work to make sincere, or earnest
comments and criticisms on a rich array of subjects
from identity to art history, to racial profiling
to power relationships.
Contemporary art is often thought of as containing
a grain of dissatisfaction or need for change. The
commonly held conception is that that fine art is
attempting to push formal and ideological strategies
into new territory, or to critique existing strategies,
whereas cultural expressions of other sorts are
simply playing out aesthetics in a superficial or
complicit fashion. The inclusion of comic based
art, David Reeves, Get your War on, 2001, and Matt
Forderer’s, Wdeck, 2001 (a deck of playing
cards featuring President Bush in drag) allows for
some blending between worlds and uses for art, from
the gallery to the street to the bookstore. Thankfully,
the show’s curator, Amei Wallach leads the
viewer to consider the often curator upheld rift
between fine and popular art. In her accompanying
essay, she references Art Spiegelman’s, Maus,
as an example of how conventionally humorous or
non-serious channels such as comic books can address
the most grave of issues, in this case the holocaust.
Wallach lauds Spiegelman’s ability to successfully
engage cosmic issues in a comic way. She sees him
as the epitomy of using humor as a strategy for
engaging previously taboo and tacit subjects.
The work in the gallery at Apex however is of the
fine variety. And there is a tone of angry humor
in this show. Some of the pieces are biting and
aggressive and are aimed at leveling the playing
field and to illuminate power structures and relationships
that may be the cause of fear, control, and injustice.
Humor in this show is often used to wash away rigid
un-truths. Artists in the show seem to be saying
that infallible truth is a laugh and that meaning
and conviction is more complex, chaotic, flexible
and contextual.
Olav Westphalen’s Custom Rim Job, 2004 is
a good example of this process. In Germany it is
illegal to display the swastika in any way. Westphalen
transforms this symbol into something ridiculous,
placing white metal versions on his bicycle in the
place of wheels. He attempts to ride the bicycle
through a German public green space, having very
little success. His work laughs not only at the
swastika, but suggests that it need not be dogmatically
feared - his work reveals and weakens it’s
target simultaneously.
Similarly, Marie Watt’s Flag, 2003, pokes
fun at Jasper John’s flag works of the 60’s.
Jasper Johns is considered a pioneer of the pop
art movement and is revered for his radical combination
of unconventional materials and methods with common
images such as the American flag or target. Watt
re-creates this piece by sewing together in a patchwork
fashion re-claimed blankets and fabrics, undercutting
the symbol of the white man as innovator or genius
in contemporary art. Like Sherry Levine’s
photographic work, this Flag is both an act of love
and respect for the canon, but an act of defiance
and a statement of need for a fragmentation, multiplicity,
and re-consideration of accepted artistic truths.
This show left me with some questions including:
Can the artist be comic and the curator/critic be
cosmic or vice versa? Or does the artists need be
both? How much does context define whether the art
is fine or popular. The important thing is not that
the artist uses humor, it is that he/she use it
effectively and devise a new way to be funny. Can
something be all comic and still be cosmic. In other
words is it ok just to laugh, or must we also think
– or is a laugh a more powerful and immediate
way of thinking?
David Smith
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