"Show Plugs into Funny Bone" by Jesse Simon in The Manitoban
review of the exhibition "Laughing"

Artworks at their best when able to withstand scrutiny.
The show is called Laughing and, and indeed one of the predominant sounds heard filling Plug In on opening night was laughter. Why were people laughing? Well, that’s precisely what this art exhibit is about: it examines not only the nature of humour in art, but also the variety of situations that will give rise to laughter.
For much of this century, humour has been employed not merely as an end for art, but even as a veil for more serious philosophical issues. Dada and Theatre of the Absurd are but two of the movements that sought to make their audience think by first making it laugh. This trend has continued on into traditions like postmodernism, where the result of radical recontextualizations can be quite hilarious.
A number of the pieces in Laughing attempt to draw on the humour that comes from such recontextulization. But while a few of them succeed perfectly, one or two end up settling for an unsatisfying type of vacuous irony.
The major problem with art that’s built on a foundation of irony-for-irony’s sake is that all too often the end result will suffer for it. There is a world of difference between a funny idea and a carefully considered aesthetic object.
The pieces in Laughing that are most successful are those that take a funny idea and translate it visually. Three pieces in particular stand out by being not only funny, but also exceptionally realized.
One piece by Les Newman features a telephone equipped with unlimited long-distance hanging on the wall. Beside it are six nicely coloured prints of long-distance phone numbers. The inscription beneath the phone says that these are the numbers of people who were mean to the artist when he was trying to make a living as a telephone researcher.
Almost every second person between 18 and 35 in Winnipeg has had a telephone job at some point, so having a chance for revenge placed so palpably before them is bound to strike a chord. (I didn’t see anyone picking up the phone all evening, although I will confess to having been sorely tempted myself.)
I also really enjoyed the contributions of Cathy Kuryk, whose iconic characters, bold use of colour and keen sense of situation make for images that are not only memorable, but also quite funny.
The third and perhaps most troubling highlight of the show was Shawna Dempsey and Lori Millan’s “Lesbian National Parks and Services” installation. The two artists, dressed as park rangers, hovered around on the evening of the opening, giving out pamphlets and explaining the history and objectives of the organization. The installation itself consisted of a perfectly reconstructed park ranger’s office. Theirs is a piece that doesn’t attempt to explain away it’s own irony, but instead manages to get its point across through an accumulation of details. It takes the whole idea of recontextulalization and asks us to reconsider it for a moment.
There’s an old adage about how there’s nothing more detrimental to humour than trying to explain it. Once you start analyzing things to death, the humour has a tendency to be the first thing to go. One might almost say that the best way to approach Laughing would be to go and let your sense of humour handle the navigation.
For the most part, I would agree. I would add, however, that the best pieces in the show are the ones that can actually stand up to analysis with the laughter still intact.