Laurel Farrin & Wayne Koestenbaum Exhibit

WEGE CENTER FOR THE ARTS presents

LAUREL FARRIN / WAYNE KOESTENBAUM
LEG UP
SEPTEMBER 8 – OCTOBER 20, 2023
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LEG UP brings together the work of artist Laurel Farrin and artist/writer Wayne Koestenbaum. Sharing a sense of figurative humor and a friskiness with material, their work in the exhibition encompasses paintings on wooden and cardboard shapes, film strips, and tablecloths. LEG UP also includes videos by the artists: Koestenbaum’s are cameraless hand-painted 16mm films, and Farrin’s improvisational videos capture found and assembled materials as they come to life.

Many formal and quiet connections take place between the curly-haired artists’ works. Their deep affinity with the silent comedian Harpo Marx is a running theme throughout the exhibition. In LEG UP, Farrin and Koestenbaum nod to Harpo’s comedic leg routine, in which he hands over his leg to a perplexed Chico Marx (and others). In the exhibition, a “leg up” model poses in Koestenbaum’s portraits, while in Farrin’s work, thick painted lines take abrupt L-shaped turns like bent knees. Koestenbaum’s 2012 book The Anatomy of Harpo Marx has served as a manual for LEG UP, which celebrates gestures of colorful, free-form play, and which affirms the pleasures that arise from tactile, witty orneriness.

LAUREL FARRIN & WAYNE KOESTENBAUM | CONVERSATION
Saturday, Sept 16, 10:00 am CT – 11:00 am CT
ONLINE / ZOOM

THE GROUP TICKLING EXPERIMENT | FILM SCREENING AND CONVERSATION WITH WAYNE KOESTENBAUM
Friday, Oct 13, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Wege Center for the Arts | Ross Theater

REGISTER FOR EVENTS at https://wegecenter.org/current