Description

Playtime celebrates the sight gag and the visual pun. Engaging the medium, these works employ a purely visual mode of communication, one that depends on comic timing as well as space. The artists look not only to silent comedies for influence, but to the external storytelling of Jacques Tati, the surreal anthropomorphizations of Ernie Kovacks and the tradition of trick photography tracing back to the Lumiere Brothers. Aided by props and animals, the artists appear alone with their cameras, concocting vignettes of wit and expressiveness, without the use of dialogue. Playtime salutes the absurd, the wayward and the out of place. Included in the program are works by Stuart Sherman, VALIE EXPORT, Phyllis Baldino, George Kuchar, John Baldessari, William Wegman, Cynthia Maughan and James Byrne, among others.