Fool's Privilege

Imagine you’re at a modern ball at Versailles. The court is assembled. Everyone is dressed, performing, and watching, and the fools are ready to make fun of everybody, king and queen included.

Geneviève Figgis’s Court Painting sets the scene: red carpet, queen on her throne, ladies-in-waiting in pannier gowns, courtiers melting into the back wall. The guests arrive two by two in Akira Ikezoe’s Chart of Darkness_Pairs: a giraffe with a push broom, a seahorse with a hair dryer, a snail with a tape measure.

The Gossip appears in Marc Librizzi’s Kiss: coffee cup in one hand, a cigarette in the other, both smacked with red lipstick. The lid makes a face like it cannot believe what it’s hearing. Naturally, we want to know too.

Then the entertainment. Dana Schutz’s clown has brought flowers into a windstorm. Shafei Xia lines up chorus girls who enter stage right, hands linked, stockings matching. At the end is a pig in a tutu and ruffled collar: “Anche io sono bella” — I’m beautiful too. Curtis Talwst Santiago’s Tears of a Clown stands thimble-sized in a velvet jewelry box, spotlit and playing to empty red seats.

At first, you’re laughing from inside the court. Then you realize the fools — the artists — have made the joke out of you.

Fool’s Privilege is curated by the Uffner & Liu team. It brings together a heady assembly of sixteen artists working across painting, drawing, sculpture and mixed media: Amanda Ba, Sarah Ball, Anastasia Bay, Ilke Cop, Nicole Eisenman, Geneviève Figgis, Akira Ikezoe, Marc Librizzi, Rafa Macarrón, Rebecca Morgan, Curtis Talwst Santiago, Peter Saul, Dana Schutz, Jean-Pierre Villafañe, Clément Jacques-Vossen and Shafei Xia.