The Incongruous Body

Humor, it turns out, is a vital instrument that can cut through pretensions, disarming viewers in the process, and lead to thought-provoking and timeless works of art. Within this context humor demands the attention of both scientific and non-scientific minds alike.

First hinted at by Aristotle and then developed more deeply by Kant and Schopenhauer, the incongruity theory of humor holds that one finds something humorous when there is a mismatch between the conceptual understanding of something and the perception of it. This is a broad theory that encompasses many varieties of humor, including the absurd, parody, caricature, gallows humor, et al. In this exposure, it invites the viewer to revel in the awkward, to embrace the weird and to scrutinize a little bit too closely themselves and the world of which we are all a part.

The fourteen artists in this exhibition represent, stylize, hybridize, and deconstruct the human body to starkly different comic effect. Their work is politically poignant and socially engaging; it uses observational humor and storytelling; it challenges the status quo; it defies logic; it misdirects; it exploits cultural iconography and historical references; and most of all it lays bare the inner workings of their wit. 

edit: Exhibition overview from museum website.   

Alessandro Gallo - Come Fly with Me