Gary Cannone

Artist’s Statement

Growing up in the 1970s, I lived for comedy that trafficked in parody and irreverence: The Carol Burnett Show, Mad Magazine, Wacky Packages, Dean Martin’s Celebrity Roasts, and Norm Crosby. In my first year of college I saw Vito Acconci lecture and decided to become an artist.

Many of my projects have encouraged communal acts of parody, most notably the crowd-sourced series Albums by Conceptual Artists. More recent work flirts with the bureaucratic aspect of minimal and conceptual art with the deft touch of a prop comic. The resulting body of work explores fragility, instability, malfunction, humiliation, torture, and death.

I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2013, and this transformed my practice into one more focused on physicality and its limits. For example, I have been fabricating chairs out of butcher paper and scotch tape for gallery spaces. Practically weightless, they encourage the visitor to sit down while contemplating the surrounding art, but to do so would lead to disaster. They act like conceptual banana peels on the gallery floor.

Website: garycannone.net

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions from 2008-2018

2018
Flop, The Situation Room, Los Angeles

2015
Forever Now, Campbell Hall, Los Angeles

2015
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, The Situation Room, Los Angeles

2008
Gary Cannone, Double Happiness, Los Angeles

Select Group Exhibitions from 2014-2017

2017
Awkward Silence, Invisible Exports, New York

2016
Punk Povera, Wuho Gallery, Los Angeles

2015
Subject: Disability, University of Texas Art Gallery, Arlington, TX

2014
Topical Constructions, Centrópolis!, Chihuahua, México

Select Fellowships and Awards

2018
2018 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists

Education

M.F.A., 1991
University of Chicago

B.A., 1987
University of Illinois at Chicago