My New York Diary (Kind of)

by Julien on January 15th, 2009

Sorry y’all Julie Doucet fans, I’m actually going to talk about my own trip to New York City, and not about the awesome cartoonist’s. That will happen some other time (and maybe somewhere else), but not today. Anyhow, this January I hopped on a greyhound overnight-party-machine and went for a carefully google mapped out visit of the city.

I vividly remember Funny Not Funny, curated by Becky Smith and Allison Kave over at the Bellwether gallery (134 Tenth Avenue, between 18th and 19th streets). According to the press release, it’s a group show that deals with “the language, content, and representation of humor in overt and subtle ways. Artists who incorporate wit, absurdity, or satire into their practice create and confront the challenge of making serious work with humorous content, and question our understanding of “what is funny”. The exhibition aims to reveal the careful balance of levity and intellectual rigor inherent to works by artists who take the risk of using the language of humor in a discipline that is not a joke.”

I spent most of my time in the gallery in the final room for many reasons, one of them being Tamy Ben-Tor’s video, Normal (2006); in which she brilliantly performs as a familiarly overbearing and anxious (but latently fragile) character leaving voice messages after voice messages. The video showcases her excellent role-playing skills, as well as her fine sense of humour which resonates in many ways with the realistically grotesque style of Ryan Trecartin, Erica Eyres and Prettythingsss (btw, it turns out both are youtube subscribers of Trecartin, the more you know…). Speaking of Trecartin, he was also part of the show with his collaborator Lizzie Fitch and their elusively (and genitally?) humorous installation:

David Shrigley was also on hand, exhibiting a few giggle-worthy drawings. And although I will admit I prefer to enjoy his art in book or pocket format, props must be given to him regardless, for his masterful wit and sense of comedy. The crudity of his lines and letters, and his queasy use of space and text, seems to transform the way words are internally read into something invariably funny that make me pee my pants, hard. You can get 2 of his artbooks, a set of postcards and two smaller booklets by him at the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore (211 Bernard W), just saying.

I suggest you take a look at this to see more of this show’s jewels. Coming up soon: MOMA, PS1, New Museum and Greene Naftali kind-of-coverage, plus cool zinesters and more?