Serious tings mek laugh
February 1 – March 9, 2013
Opening reception: Friday, February 1, 2013 from 6-9pm
Serious tings mek laugh, an exhibition organized by Sam Korman, focuses on comedy and its relationship to language. Soliciting various artists, critics, curators, and writers to re-tell their favorite jokes and stand-up routines, the project takes as its point of departure the ways in which comedy is a disruptive form of exchange. This re-telling highlights the political nature of speech and language and how they are employed to organize and structure cultural and political bodies. However, comedy affects a change in the system, and, even flatly re-performed, becomes a disjunctive break, which mutates syntax into absurdity. It is a serious linguistic game, an anarchic reevaluation of the basic stuff of thought. As the videos of each re-performance loop on the television screens, though, the experience becomes mediated, and the same manner through which language is distributed (in this case, television) turns into a syndicated spontaneity, a chorus off time, an alternative to the present tense.
Gallery hours for this exhibition will be Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 1-6, and by appointment.
Des Lee Gallery
1627 Washington Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63103
314.621.8735