Pillow Talk's Comedy of Erros by Fiona Alison Duncan
'Comedy of Erros' was a group exhibition at Gallery @ in Los Angeles. Organized by Fiona Alison Duncan as an extension of her social practice Pillow Talk.
The collection of works in the show explores both errors and eros and the messiness of their interrelatedness, spanning a range of entanglements, from economic to sensuous to linguistic. Featuring artists from five nations of North America, each exhibiting their own capacity for humor, pleasure, survival.
Vaquera, Val Breeder, Takako Yamaguchi, Sojourner Truth Parsons, SoiL Thornton, Reynaldo Rivera, Pippa Garner, Neke Carson, Matt Kenny, John Greyson, Ishi Glinsky, Fernando Mendez Corona, and Clifford Prince King, with archival materials on Ilona Staller and Florynce ‘Flo’ Kennedy.
Curation & words Fiona Alison Duncan
Top image: Val Breeder, Performance Review, film still, 2020. Boardroom discussion excerpts of 'The Apprentice,' 5 min 12 sec.
Pillow Talk by Fiona Alison Duncan, Kennedy and Staller Books and Ephemera, 2020. Detail: Gary Indiana signature stamp from ‘Love A Loves Me!’
Silver linings rain or shine
That little red squiggle
Only catches me sometimes
Pillow Talk by Fiona Alison Duncan, Kennedy and Staller Books and Ephemera, 2020. Detail: Florynce ‘Flo' Kennedy and Ilona Staller archival press photos.
Telling Typos
Comedy of Erros
Pillow Talk by Fiona Alison Duncan, Kennedy and Staller Books and Ephemera, 2020. Detail: Abortion Rap (1971, First Edition) by Diane Schulder and Florynce Kennedy, on loan care of the Los Angeles Public Library Special Collections. Confessions by Cicciolina (2001).
Tightrope walking over crabs in a barrel
Don’t Slip
slip
slip slp [sic]
Sojourner Truth Parsons, Untitled, detail, 2020. Ink on paper, tape, balloons. Dimensions variable.
Into her mind’s dictatorship:
I only have the I right to write if I get it right I
Hubris! Human folly!
THE REIGN OF THE SELF-ELECTED
Reynaldo Rivera, Girls, El Conquistador, 1997/2020. Archival pigment print. 33 x 44 inches. Edition of 3 plus II AP.
Stop laughing already! This joke is not for
ilu (the neurodiversity justice movement c. 2022)
Archival 'Flo Kennedy for President' shirt, held in the Florynce Kennedy archives at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, printed by Harvard Imaging Services.
Remember how popular humor
Once came at the expense of another
SoiL Thornton, Who's Soil Soils (Doc Johnson edition), detail, 2020. Health-Grade Body-Safe Premium Silicone mounting iVibe Select iWand vibrators. Dimensions variable.
What’s funny that isn’t harmful?
Fiona Alison Duncan, The Pillow Talk Private Library, 2020. 38 books and magazines from cancelled series repurposed as pedestal.
Latent genius
Depression my repression
I said if there’s one thing I don’want in the gallery
It’s a mannequin
Pippa Garner, Human Prototype, 2020. Mixed Media. 78 x 33 x 36 inches.
OH! Here i am again!
Making monumental things happen
with a bank account balance
too shallow to skip rocks on
Pippa Garner, Human Prototype, 2020. Mixed Media. 78 x 33 x 36 inches.
How entitled are you to your pain
What are efficient actions
Pippa Garner, Human Prototype, 2020. Mixed Media. 78 x 33 x 36 inches.
Every march a prayer not to go to full warfare
Every post a prayer “...”
Every prayer “...”
She wants to cum like
Few truly Want their dreams
To come real
Because who can deal
with the Responsibility
Vaquera, Ring Bearer Pillow Underwear, 2020. 100% cotton underwear & pillow, steel and lucite engagement ring. Dimensions variable.
Pippa Garner, Human Prototype, 2020. Mixed Media. 78 x 33 x 36 inches.
Fernando Mendez Corona, Pillow talks, detail, 2020. Ink and acrylic on bedsheet, dimensions variable.
Informational backing
1. Theoretical contradictions can only be resolved through practical activity. It’s natural to learn by trial and error. Sh*** on our culture of fear of failure
2. Shame is a social affliction that’s so acutely felt in the body (life-threatening = exile), it’s often mistaken as an individual problem. It is so overwhelming, we often can’t identify what it is we are feeling. Shame is impossible to heal on one’s own; that we are alone is a fiction.
Reynaldo Rivera, The Butterfly Girl, TBD/2020. Archival pigment print. Edition of 3 plus II AP.
