Laughable art
It isn’t your attempt at a portrait — it’s art with a sense of humour
Kristen Pauch-Nolin

Visual art has a reputation of being austere and stodgy, perceived as requiring audiences to scrutinize work in order to understand it. Art, however, has the capacity to be accessible, with pieces that are satirical, playful and even hilarious.

The Winnipeg Art Gallery’s current exhibition Situation Comedy: Humour in Recent Art provides examples of work that demonstrates the place of humour in art and reflects the range of subjects people find funny. Representing a variety of interpretations, media and approaches, the work is at times amusing, nostalgic and silly, with pieces that reveal comedy’s place in contemporary culture and within the human condition.

Situation Comedy is an extremely large exhibition with more than 60 works by almost as many artists. Dominated by videos, photos and text-based installations, the show also includes a smaller number of comic-book-style drawings, paintings and works of sculpture.

Alex Koschkarow’s Pie Fight opens the show and is one of the most interesting of the eight video installations on display. The short piece features a group of partygoers who, when offered tables full of pies, engage in a spirited round of dessert warfare. The soundtrack — a canned-music version of Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me — contributes an added layer of quirkiness to the amusing visuals.

Audience members become the performers in Laura Nova’s karaoke installation On the Spot. Willing participants enter a makeshift performance area where they’re prompted to tell scripted jokes. Once delivered, the jokes are followed by a comedian’s drum roll that continues regardless of the presence of a volunteer comic. The piece is clever and amusing while in use and surprisingly eerie and pathetic when empty.

Stephanie Brook’s Politeness Strategy 2002 similarly plays with the possibility of multiple readings. The minimal text-based installation includes three small plaques that display simple and recognizable phrases. Offered a variety of word options, viewers complete the predetermined line,

“You have a nice” with either “day,” “ass” or “attitude.” The work effectively pokes fun at language, drawing attention to the generic phrases that have become commonplace in verbal interactions.

Humanity’s tendency to be amusing (despite itself) is captured in Dana Shutz’s paintings Sneeze 1 and Sneeze 2. Featuring disembodied heads that have been caught in the act of sneezing, each is surrounded by alarming amounts of debris. The work is funny, especially attractive to the five-year-old trapped inside every adult body.

Appealing to a similar sensibility are Erwin Wurm’s large-format colour photograph’s Looking for a Bomb 2 and 3. The first work features the image of a man with his arm shoved in another man’s pants, and the in the second his head is in the pants. Timely, the pieces are politically charged — exploring issues of personal privacy vs. national security — and extremely absurd.

Although audiences will not continually laugh out loud while viewing the exhibition, Situation Comedy does provide an opportunity to experience the lighter side of art.