Dead Serious

Site: 120710

Oct 24 – Dec 12

Curators: Jonathan Bachrach

Jurors: Jonathan Bachrach and Michael Diamond

Description:

People have been trying to figure out why we laugh forever. We laugh at surprise, absurdity, embarrassment, recognition, bad behavior, things that don't belong together, things that go wrong, and sometimes because everything has gotten so ridiculous there's nothing else to do.

Artists have been working with this stuff forever too. Dada, Duchamp, Surrealism, satire, camp, conceptual art, performance—artists have used jokes, absurdity, irony, bad taste, play, and plain old stupidity to mess with expectations, challenge authority, deal with difficult subjects, and make us see things differently.

And right now feels like a particularly good time for it. The world is pretty ridiculous. A sense of humor may be one of the more useful things we have for getting through it.

For DEAD SERIOUS, we're looking for work that makes us laugh, smile, squirm, groan, do a double take, or wonder whether we should be laughing at all. It can be subtle, absurd, dark, dry, uncomfortable, ridiculous, or just really funny. We're not looking for jokes turned into artworks. We're looking for good art that understands how humor works. All media welcome. Surprise us. Make us laugh.

Judging rubric