Slapstick!
The Art of Comedy

Pie Fights! Fist Fights! Chases!
Major turbulences, but also minor everyday mishaps – like the slippery banana peel – have become famous slapstick scenes. Visual artists are hot on the heels of the great masters and make use of the cultural codes of slapstick. In various media they purposely play with slapstick quotations, motifs and concepts borrowed from the genre.

The Joy of Failure
The exhibition shows works by contemporary artists in the context of silent slapstick movies from the early history of cinema, tracing in the process the characteristics of slapstick in the art of the present day.
The works center around failure, in very different and individual ways, with humor and also with dignity. The celebration of failure is imbued with a special charm against the background of today’s society of perfectionism and high achievement.

An exhibition of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.

Artists

Francis Alÿs | John Bock | Charlie Chaplin | Clyde Bruckman | Carola Dertnig | Marcel Duchamp | Robert Elfgen | Peter Fischli/​David Weiss | Rodney Graham | Jeppe Hein | Buster Keaton | Szymon Kobylarz | Alexej Koschkarow | Peter Land | Louis Lumière | Gordon Matta-Clark | Bruce McLean | Steve McQueen | Bruce Nauman | Fred C. Newmeyer | Vincent Olinet | James Parrott | Wilfredo Prieto | Charles Reisner | Edward Sedgwick | Mack Sennett | Timm Ulrichs | John Wood | Paul Harrison