A groundbreaking group exhibition titled "Seriously" at Sprüth Magers gallery in London presents conceptual photography with an unexpected twist: a genuine sense of humor. The four-floor showcase features an eclectic mix of still and moving images that include clowns, costumes, Star Wars figurines, dogs watching pornography, a colorless cheeseburger, and artists running over milk cartons, challenging the traditional perception of serious conceptual art.
One of the exhibition's most compelling recent works is Martine Syms' "She Mad: The Non-Hero," a conceptual TikTok narrative inspired by Lil Nas X's 2021 Life Story series. Borrowing the rapper's structural approach and stylistic elements, Syms delivers a convincing performance as an emerging arts scene star who openly shares her battles with health issues, depression, and loneliness. The piece serves as a sharp satire of social media culture while effectively dismantling conventional notions about success and celebrity.
The exhibition's auditory landscape is punctuated by Louise Lawler's provocative seven-minute audio work "Birdcalls" (1972-81), in which she vocalizes the names of 28 famous white male artists using various bird call styles. This jarring piece confronts art world sexism while presenting nature as artifice, paralleling how art history itself functions as a constructed form of power. Despite its serious message about systemic inequality, the work's absurd execution inevitably draws smiles from viewers.
A significant portion of the exhibition features artists associated with feminist and conceptualist movements from the 1970s and 1990s, who employed confrontational and provocative humor to challenge feminine stereotypes perpetuated by mass media and advertising. An androgynous Sarah Lucas brazenly bites into a banana, while a collection of Cindy Sherman's works provides sharp satirical commentary on feminine stereotypes found in cinema and media. Sherman's 2018 color work presents four heavily made-up characters in colorful tulle gowns, their expressions hovering between smiles and grimaces as they appear to sit in the sea, creating a dissonant and deliberately awkward visual narrative.
Birgit Jürgenssen contributes to this feminist critique with her absurd 3D housewife's apron shaped like an oven, exemplifying how these artists' visual puns function as rebellions against restrictive gender norms. Their willingness to appear ridiculous serves a greater purpose of exposing how social codes and repressed sexual desires are fundamentally farcical constructs that deserve mockery rather than reverence.
The exhibition celebrates artists who refuse to take themselves too seriously, particularly those who depict the human body as a malleable, plastic form capable of both absurdity and obscenity. Bruce Nauman's "Studies for Holograms" (1970) shows the artist pulling and stretching his mouth into bizarre, comical shapes. German photographer Thomas Ruff, not typically known for cheerful work, throws himself around a room in his "L'Empereur" series, dressed in brown and yellow to match the space's dreary color scheme, creating moments of pure slapstick as he slumps and dives between armchairs and lamps.
Several artists find humor through objects and assemblages, with Thomas Demand contributing a witty photograph of a slipper stuck under a door. However, some sections of the exhibition prove less successful, with one wall packed with deliberately banal images of vacuum cleaners, bread slices, and buckets that, while conceptually sound, provide little actual entertainment value, demonstrating that humor in art remains highly subjective.
The exhibition occasionally struggles when it ventures into art historical parody, with artists like Ruff recreating Fischli/Weiss works, Jonathan Monk nodding to Lawler, and John Waters sending up Gursky. These references require extensive art historical knowledge to fully appreciate, potentially alienating viewers unfamiliar with the original works. More accessible are Aneta Grzeszykowska's recognizable parodies of Sherman, displayed alongside actual Sherman pieces, creating what could be described as caricatures of caricature, where satire becomes self-referentially twisted.
William Wegman's "Experiment" delivers perhaps the exhibition's best punchline through elegant simplicity. The first image bears the caption "As an experiment he stood on his head," while the second states "Everything looked upside down." This deadpan humor exemplifies how conceptual art's inherent pompousness can be effectively deflated through minimal intervention.
One of the show's most famous pieces is British artist Keith Arnatt's influential 1969 performance photograph "Self-Burial," a nine-image sequence documenting the artist slowly disappearing into a hole he dug in the ground. Originally broadcast on German television in 1969 for a few seconds each evening without explanation, the work must have been deeply disturbing to unsuspecting viewers. The piece carries dark humor in its suggestion that while many might enjoy watching an artist disappear, death ultimately awaits everyone.
The exhibition's highlight is John Smith's 12-minute video "The Girl Chewing Gum," shot on 16mm film in 1976 and given its own dedicated room. The piece features a voice shouting directions to street action in London, but the apparent director is actually a narrator describing the movements of unwitting passersby with increasingly fantastical enthusiasm. While hilarious, the work proves eerily prescient in anticipating contemporary concerns about fake news and false narratives.
The exhibition faces the fundamental challenge that humor remains subjective, cultural, and temporal, with many jokes failing to resonate with contemporary audiences. Some inclusions prove particularly puzzling, such as Carrie Mae Weems' photograph of minstrel salt and pepper shakers, whose connection to the exhibition's theme remains unclear even upon careful consideration.
Paradoxically, "Seriously" functions less as a source of pure laughter and more as an exploration of humor as a tool for challenging political structures and societal values. Through playfulness and wit, conceptual artists have successfully pushed photography beyond traditional documentary approaches into less stable, more experimental territories. While conceptual art may not typically inspire belly laughs, this exhibition demonstrates its capacity for meaningful social commentary through unconventional means. The exhibition continues at Sprüth Magers in London through January 31.
