Ha Ha! Business! at Luis de Jesus Los Angeles
@ Luis de Jesus Los Angeles
Jun 27 – Aug 08, 2015
Very interesting exhibition with a strong reflexion about our times. About the reason of the theme, Luis Jesus says:
Twenty-five years ago I organized an exhibition titled $PENT: Currency, Security, and Art on Deposit for The New Museum in New York. (…)
Installed at a bank next door to The New Museum (concurrent with The Decade Show), $PENT was a serious exhibition designed to inject a big dose of subversive humor and provocative criticality upon a well-meaning host. It still amazes me that I managed to circumvent a cadre of, frankly, very suspicious bank officials who were left to scratch their heads and fend with the effusive congratulatory and community-building cheerleading of the museum’s larger-than-life, never-say-never director, Marcia Tucker.
Fast forward: late last year, while doing research for our summer group show, I came across an image on the internet that stopped me in my tracks and caused me to break out in laughter. The HA HA! BUSINESS! meme gave me a good slap on the face and brought back great memories of $PENT. There he was again—the boogeyman with the briefcase full of cash, laughing uncontrollably while the world around him burns (my reading, anyway). The more things change… And herein may lie the biggest difference between the two shows (call it a generational/attitude shift). If $PENT encapsulated the uneasiness of the time, HA HA! BUSINESS! relishes the discomfort with a huge grin on its face.
The art world is now a global business, of course, as is just about everything else.
