David Shrigley: Brain Activity

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

Through Sept. 23

With the work of David Shrigley, “you’re either with him or you’re not,” said Priscilla Frank in HuffingtonPost.com. The British artist has for years now been making deadpan works that “replace the grand epiphany with the anticlimactic punch line.” The former cartoonist is most loved for his drawings, which line the walls of his new touring exhibition. Yet his quirky sense of humor might come through even more directly in his sculptures. Take I’m Dead (2010), a taxidermied terrier standing on its hind legs and holding a hand-printed picket sign that bears the two words of the piece’s title. Or Hanging Sign (2007), a hanging sign with the words “Hanging Sign” chalked on it. “Perhaps the grand punch line to all the jokes is seeing all the works in a gallery setting.” Shrigley’s apparent intent is to liken the tension of “getting an artwork” to that of “getting a joke.”

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Among the hundreds of drawings on display, at least a handful “stick in the mind, like gum to a sole,” said Kenneth Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle. An image of a scarred male face carries the caption, “Here is your portrait. I wish to be paid immediately.” Another drawing consists entirely of the words “Progress/ progress/ progress/ progress/ progress/ progress/ the end.” Shrigley seems always to enjoy himself, even when his project of poking fun at how petty and vain we all are reveals a deep pessimism. The show’s centerpiece installation, Insects, scatters dozens of stick-figure-like bugs across the floor under a polyester black sun that evokes Nazi iconography. Then again, maybe I’m taking the work too seriously. The whole show is probably best viewed as a “forgettable romp.” On “the broad plain of forgettable contemporary art,” a romp qualifies as a “welcome diversion.”