by Humor is in a strange relationship with the art world. Often classified as less claim after the work of a true artist, when humor finds his way into the graphic, it is more of a spice than the main course.
How refreshing then to see the extensive new exhibition of the Phoenix Art Museum, Funny Business, which boldly and determined in the field of comedic photography. The show shows humor from an abundance of angles, including slapstick, bizarre, surreal, ironic, parody and so much more. The show offers enough opportunity to think carefully about which laugh is ridiculous – and enjoy a hearty laugh on a summer day.
Related: Edward Burynsky: “My photos are like Rorschach tests”
According to the curator of the show, Emilia Mickevicius, photography is an ideal medium to explore humor because, unlike other art forms, it has a special relationship with reality. “Jokes deliver punch lines, deliver surprises, disturbing hierarchy or expectation of expectation for the functioning of humor is of essential importance. Photography is good at doing this, since the special relationship with the already existing visual world is.
Some, such as ducks and boxers of the Hungarian pet champion Camilla “Ylla” Koffler, embody the feeling that Mickevicius talks about. Her snapshot of the title creatures, which hang together on the beach and both look curious about the frame in good time, just feels too good to be true. In its difficulty and absurdity, it resists the idea that every photo is a fractional moment of reality, which arises as to what the truth is accepted when photographic film is exposed to the light of the day.
“Humor shows how context -related photographic importance can be,” said Mickevicius. “When someone tells a joke, it does all of this sneaky linguistic work, provided you as a listener have all of these previous assumptions that the joke somehow. It is so context -dependent. Photos are too – they adopt the importance of one another, they are so porous to different fields, different areas and experience.”
Jo Ann Callis’ shot from 1980, parrot and sailboat, looks similarly composed – how did a parrot ended up on the lip of a bathtub and watched a toy sailboat in the water in the water? But her shot moves in a different direction than Ylla, whereby you move away from a sweetness of the storybook and instead pull yourself to a lynchic surreal – there are overtones of the threat and discomfort, as if something insensitive is only out of the frame.
Together, the two photos show the representation layers that are present on the show, the degrees of irony, the many tones and shadows and emotion shadows that contain these photographs properly. The photos in the funny shop very much have the feeling of puzzles, everyone asks the audience to interpret exactly what is going on and how it got into the film. “I will never be fed up with thinking about how complex photos are, how not they are,” said Mickevicius. “Humor is simply a great lens to do that.”
Other pieces on the show, like the street photographer Garry Winogrand’s Untitled 1963 from a woman in a cat-eye sunglasses that stares into the camera, while two Rhinocerose heads are more in the variety “You Can’ta Make the Up”. What makes this photo are, like everything – from the empty expression of the woman and the attitude to the positioning of the animals itself – is put together at the crucial moment and shows how humor can sometimes be a question of milliseconds.
The funny business iPhone videos of the Instagram -Feed from Street -Photographer Jeff Mermelsstein Feed is contemporary, where he captures strange little street life in New York City. “He has been working with traditional cameras for decades, but has been very excited in recent years by working with his iPhone,” said Mickevicius. “They are these ultra zooms in moments of the urge of people in New York, these cases of touch between people. It comes from a place where I have called a loving voyeurism, this kind of enthusiastic eye, which rounds around and is like” Wow, see how interesting people are! “
Funny Business also makes room for the sublime of the American photographer Leslie Krims’ Porsche Rainbows, in which the artist sprayed a garden hose on the title vehicle and held the beautiful rainbow. In the faded golden tones of the Porsche and the Lo-Fi aesthetics of these 70s, they have a wonderful feeling of relapse and are reminiscent of a kind of lazy afternoon Americana that is reduced by Slip’n-n-slides. “They are a simple and concise action that shows how photography can record these moments of magic,” said Mickevicius. “It’s just a pretty, joyful piece.”
As if this is not enough, it presents the Mexican-American multimedia artist Steffi Faircloths Bordertown ASMR series for something whole funny business, in which she offers short videos that represent her lived experience with the US border with Mexico. Faircloth simply enjoys a Mexican Elote – A grilled corn ear – in front of the border wall. Their ingenious fact of consumption makes the kilometers of the razor, which affects its completely ridiculous current. “By performing this act of pleasure in front of the wall, it is as if it is able to be wise and tender and playful as if several realities can exist at the same time, joy and suffering can collapse,” said Mickevicius.
The Faircloth series now also seems to be foresight, since the official account of the White House X published a video of people who were deported and ironically classified as “Amr” as “Amr”. “Faircloth published this in her Instagram stories at the time and said:” Wow, you know that I did it first? “, Said Mickevicius.” It is totally terrible, but also a really striking moment that she expected to mobilize this form in such a insidious way. “
As very funny business can be a cerebral experience, it is primarily a pleasant. And that’s music for Mickevicius’ ears. “I was delighted to hear how people laugh in the galleries,” she said, adding that she hopes that laughter can be a way for the audience to think about art and society in a new way. “With all my shows, I like to move people to examine how photos work and how very refined and slippery they can be as representations. If they go to a museum, they meet perspectives that differ from their own. They have such a strength – they can complete the interpretation group.”
