Curator: Mathew Jones
Sometimes you can feel a little awkward laughing in a gallery, especially when you are laughing because you think something is so absurd that you are not exactly sure why it is there in the first place or why you are standing in front of it. Dumb made me laugh. And according to Mathew Jones's catalogue, I think this was the response that I was supposed to have. Mathew Jones has curated an exhibition that reflects a trend towards art that can see the ridiculous side of much cultural production, a trend towards art that is both self-reflexive and humorous. Jones does not presume that the viewer possesses certain 'insider information' in the form of complex theories to interpret art. This is not to say that Dumb is anti-intellectual or rejects theory wholesale. Rather, the works of Hanson, Lexier and Lopez open up and challenge the absurdities and obsessiveness of some conceptual art practice. Jones has selected works that among other things, made him laugh.
Premised by notions of banality and absurdity, the works in Dumb are reliant, somewhat, on the viewer's identifying with the artist's obsession. Micah Lexier's Portrait of David appeals to a broad spectrum of interests in that it deals with our (or more specifically his) anxieties about aging and death. Lexier seems to see the humour in working through his own anxieties by embarking upon a monolithic conceptual art project. He has photographed seventy-five males named David whose ages range from one to seventy-five, representing the artist's expected life span. In order to gather his Davids, Lexier advertised in local papers and on radio in Canada. Overwhelmed by six hundred callers, he asked staff at the