Susumu Kamijo, Bear Mountain (2023), via Alexander Berggruen
On this summer at Alexander Berggruen, the exhibition Levity presents a range of paintings that reflect on the comic and the absurd through a range of styles and techniques. Irony, mirth, the absurd, the evolving image of cartoon, and even darker, but amusing reads of the human condition serve as entry points into the language of the contemporary. Using humor as a mode to elicit a direct reaction from the viewer, the works on view press the viewer to move beyond their comfort zone.
R. Crumb, Can’t Seem to Find the Right Woman (circa 1967-1969), via Alexander Berggruen
The artists in Levity approach their work playfully, as some find jovial gratification in the everyday, hyperbolize a quality of a character or situation, toy with idioms and quirks in communication, and address weighty issues in a buoyant manner. There’s striking, comical animals looping through the works of artist Tom Howse, using the quotidian and the surreal in equal measure to challenge and confront the viewer, while artist Susumu Kamijo appraoaches similar material, a bear peeking over a poodle, in a peculiar arrangement. Similarly painting for the sheer pleasure of color, form, and lighthearted content, Eddie Martinez has claimed that his flower series can be humorous in their occasional resemblances of genitalia.
George Condo, Untitled (2016), via Alexander Berggruen
Throughout, humor is employed to magnify a feature of the subjects depicted by many artists in this show. Here, R. Crumb’s lustful and satirical cartoons meet George Condo’s intimate and psychological stylizations of figures. Likewise, the animated figures in Nicasio Fernandez’s paintings often appear in exaggerated emotional states and escalated situations. In Stewing, Fernandez makes a visual pun between the feeling of dwelling in one’s anxieties, being cooked, and soaking in a jacuzzi. Hulda Guzmán’s painting Kali, you’re so funny portrays another pictorial quip in this show in which a cartoon-like rendering of the Hindu goddess of destruction Kali is reveling with the artist’s father, the architect, as they construct their family’s home in the North of the Dominican Republic following a hurricane’s destruction of its roof.
The show closes August 29th.
– C. Rinehart
Read more:
Alexander Berggruen [Exhibition Site]
