Opening: Thursday 31 August 2017 6-8pm with floor talk of the artist
The Museum of Modern Comedy in Art (MoMCo) – A Proposal is either an artwork in the guise of a speculative museum, or a museum dressed up as a contemporary installation. Which of these it will turn out to be remains to be seen.
The modern avant-garde is commonly defined as a series of groundbreaking, heroic and grave departures. By contrast, the Museum of Modern Comedy in Art (MoMCo) posits that the avant-garde could just as well be understood as comedy, albeit a secretive or obtuse form of comedy.
MoMCo is dedicated to highlighting, researching and mediating the hidden, comedic aspects of modern and contemporary art. The classical notion of reckless, avant-garde bravado has been largely debunked, not least for its implicit sexism and open Eurocentrism. But the underlying comedic mechanisms deserve re-examination as they still have the potential to profoundly reframe art, reality, our perception of ourselves and others, and the world we so awkwardly share. They may still represent the best shot we have at radical imagination and true innovation.
MoMCo aspires to act on three, interconnected planes: as an art historical institution amending the conventional record on avant-garde achievements; as a future collection of modernist art works; and as a curatorial initiative, hosting temporary exhibitions, dedicated to tracing the complex and veiled genealogies, from comedic modernism to contemporary art.
For this first exhibition, MoMCo is presented in the form of a tentative historical chart and a series of clay figurines depicting key-moments in bona fide art history. We thus witness the moment when Kazimir Malevich transformed a cartoon print into one of the most revered modernist icons or when Mierle Laderman Ukeles, looking at a pile of stinking garbage, suddenly saw abject labour as new art.
Furthermore, MoMCo is proud to present Resuscitations, its first exhibition of contemporary art, comprising video works by Agnieszka Polska (PL/DE), Roee Rosen (IL/US), Sally O'Reilly (UK), Gernot Wieland (A/DE), and Olav Westphalen (DE/US).
Resuscitations will be screened at intervals, punctuating the audience’s viewing experience. While the works in Resuscitations are widely divergent, they are all in some manner preoccupied with bringing something or someone inanimate to life: a word, a golem, a dead philosopher, an artist’s radically personal collection of favourite objects and materials, or a set of simple wooden building blocks. Each weaves back and forth across the categorical division between something that is and something that is not yet. Read more about Resuscitations here.
The Museum of Modern Comedy in Art (MoMCo) – A Proposal has grown out of an ongoing conversation between artist Olav Westphalen and curator Lívia Páldi. Between 2013 and 2016, Westphalen and Páldi co-organised a series of shows, events and public discussions, culminating in the jointly edited book Dysfunctional Comedy: A Reader. This publication brought together a group of artists and comedians to reflect on the various strategies and traditions of latent comedy in art, and on their ability to replace prevalent norms, attitudes and narratives with new configurations.
