Curated by Antoine Schafroth
Nose-Thumbing brings together works by nine artists – Julie Béna, Hans Bryssinck & Christoph Hefti, Jacob Bullen, Cole Denyer, Beth Frey, Brian Griffiths, Amanda Kyritsopoulou and Milly Peck – whose diverse practices explore the human condition through a lens of humour and theatricality.
Drawing inspiration from Nuar Alsadir’s book Animal Joy, a reflection on the disarming power of humour, in this group exhibition, the artist is seen as a “late-night comedian”: a type of clown “who rather than impose a fake reality on the one before them, pursues truth as un-concealment”.¹
Julie Béna's tragic clown show explores the difficulties of combining family life with an artistic career, while Hans Bryssinck and Christoph Hefti's video is an absurdist nightmare on the quest for an unattainable career in showbiz. Cole Denyer's portrait of an undercover agent infiltrating the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, speaks of fantasies of an anti-hero emancipation.
Beth Frey delves into a fictional urban landscape cohabitated by humans and cartoons and Milly Peck’s building facades seem stuck in a constant slip from three dimensionality to flatness and back. Amanda Kyritsopoulou’s miniature shoe boxes speak of a sense of longing trapped in product packaging while Jacob Bullen’s performance and the props of its aftermath, speak of the commodification of the human body. In the meantime, Brian Griffith’s stick figures, used and abused, seem to be driving back from some sort of collision.
Featuring a range of works, including painting, sculpture, video and AI-generated imagery, exploring themes of personal life drama, existential worry, architecture and history the exhibition addresses the incongruity between materiality, purpose and meaning of material production, but also looks back at its own reflection and is confronted with the moment when the work of art betrays its creator, leaving us to ponder: who is nose-thumbing whom?
¹ Nuar Alsadir, «Animal Joy», Fitzcarraldo Editions (2022), p. 28.
