Cabaret Series: ha ha ha (The Funny, the Witty, and the Grotesque)

Tuesday, February 14th, 2017

7 – 9 pm

 

#funnywittygrotesque    #cabaretseries   @storefrontnyc

 

With Beverly Fre$h, Brian Hubble, Vivian Lee, Tucker Marder, Thom Moran, and Mike Perry

 

Laughter, giggles, grins, and smirks – actions that often originate as spontaneous and instinctive expressions of amusement – create a sense of self-awareness. That which we find funny can be genuinely ground-breaking, changing people’s perspectives by signaling common spaces of understanding.

 

Humor is a subversion of conventions. Seldom the focus in dominant discourses of art, design, and architecture, there is a recurring interest in the explorations of irony, satire, and the grotesque as a means of critique of the status quo. Humor has a unique and particular potency in responding to turbulent political moments. It can deflect anger, serve as therapy in the face of traumatic events, and undermine prevailing ideologies. Can humor also promote new forms of a more optimistic practice, able to overcome anger, yet effective enough to produce change?

 

Presented during Paranoia Man in a Rat Fink Room, an installation by Freeman & Lowe, Cabaret Series: ha ha ha (The Funny, the Witty, and the Grotesque) invites artists, architects, designers, and curators to explore the intersections between humor, art, and architecture through performance and discussion.

 

About the Cabaret Series:

Each iteration of Storefront’s Cabaret Series develops modes of expression that engage with contemporary discourses in a playful and humorous manner. The events have the aim to produce new modes of communication between speakers, performers, and spectators through provocation, seduction, and immediacy.

 

About the Participants

 

Beverly Fre$h has broken several Guinness Book World Records; including breaking the most eggs on his head and compiling the tallest stack of rap tapes. Beverly has exhibited throughout the US and internationally, including China, Japan, Peru, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, France and Germany. Recent exhibitions include, MR MDWST – A REAL GOOD TIME (2015), a solo exhibition at the Cranbrook Museum of Art. He is co-founder of sUPERIORbelly, a record label based in Detroit; cofounder of WILD AMERICAN DOGS; and co-founder of the Archive of Midwestern Culture. He is an Associate Professor and Area Head of Graphic Art at DePaul University in Chicago.

 

Brian Hubble lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.  Recent exhibitions include MOCA in Los Angeles, Fastnet in Brooklyn, and Less is More Projects in Paris and Brussels. He is the co-director of Unisex Salon, an artist-run contributive platform for voices of the multi-disciplinary community. Hubble completed his MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was the recipient of the William Merchant R. French Fellowship.

 

WH Vivian Lee is the co-founder of LAMAS, a studio that is currently really excited by ornament, optical illusions, and lazy forms. Together with her partner James Macgillivray, they have experimented on these topics through school research, in temporary installations, and on permanent buildings. Lee is a U.S. registered architect who lives in Toronto.

 

Tucker Marder is an artist, filmmaker and plantsman. He has collaborated with institutions such as The National Aviary, The Nature Conservancy and Phipps Conservatory. Tucker is a recipient of the Frank Ratchye Grant for Art at the Frontier and in 2016 was named a Redford Center Grant Honoree. Tucker’s performance “STAMPEDE!”, comprised of over 200 live Crested Runner Ducks and large motorized abstract puppets premiered as part of the 2015 Parrish Road Show. Tucker is the founder of the Folly Tree Arboretum, a collection of over 175 rare and unusual trees intent on showcasing nature’s sense of humor. Tucker received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University.

 

Thom Moran is an American architect, designer, and educator. He joined the University of Michigan’s Taubman College as the 2009-2010 Muschenheim Fellow where he is currently an assistant professor. Humor and lightheartedness are at the center of his practice, which involves solo projects and several ongoing collaborations that each explore particular issues. THING THING is a Detroit-based design collaborative that makes things with plastic, using novel fabrication methods to hijack post-consumer material ecologies. With Meredith Miller he works on an architectural scale, exploring media and environment as sources for multiple, simultaneous effects. Thom and Michael Savona collect designs that engage the relationship between people, interiors, and objects at Frontieriors.

 

Mike Perry is an artist, animator, creative director, brand consultant, poet, and designer. His work encompasses paintings, drawings, sculptures, art installations, books, murals, all of which are made to conjure that feeling of soul-soaring you have when you stare into distant galaxies on a dark night, when you go on long journeys into the imagination, when you laugh and can’t stop laughing. Key to Mike’s working method is the recognition that art and objects, go through many iterations—discoveries, coverings, uncoverings—until they’re finished; people do the same until they are fully revealed. He likes to cultivate collectives of celebration, exhibition, and revelation.

 

Support

Storefront’s programming is made possible through general support from Arup; DS+R; F.J. Sciame Construction Co., Inc.; Gaggenau; Knippers Helbig; KPF; MADWORKSHOP; ODA; Rockwell Group; Roger Ferris + Partners; Tishman Speyer; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; The Greenwich Collection Ltd.; the Lily Auchincloss Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Peter T. Joseph Foundation; and by Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.