Monsieur Zohore, whose practice encompasses sculpture, painting, installation, performance, and video, often explores the complex intersections of levity and gravity. The artist’s work incorporates multifarious materials and objects as part of lively engagements with pop culture. The following statements from Zohore span self-awareness in art, and other topics.
I describe myself as a clown—that’s one of my artistic descriptors—and I’m really interested in the intersection of tragedy and comedy. How close can you get to one, and does that closeness help you get nearer to the other? A lot of my works tackle humor head-on. Humor is so exciting because it’s such a diffuser: I’m able to use it as a way of augmenting tragedy or minimizing it. In a certain sense, it’s a way of placating my audience into paying attention.
My work oscillates between nasty interrogations and desperate, sincere pleas. Right now, I have an exhibition at von ammon co., my gallery in Washington, D.C., called Les Éternels. It features two sets of reproductions Dragon Ball Z orbs that figure in the cartoon. In the Dragon Ball universe, the balls are made by this mythical dragon and our heroes are on a quest throughout the program trying to receive all seven of them. Once they have all the orbs, they’re granted a wish by the dragon. So, these become objects of desire and wish fulfillment, and those wishes are generally used to resurrect someone who’s passed away. I approached making the balls by memorializing each set to a specific person who has passed away. In this exhibition, there are two sets. A green orb set for Marvin Gaye, who was born in D.C. and is celebrated for his contributions of love and happiness and joy to the world. He was tragically murdered by his father. The other set of balls is for John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. sniper. He terrorized the community through his random acts of killing in the city in the early 2000s, when I was a child. Imbuing these whimsical and, in a sense, comedic orbs with an austere narrative is one way that my practice moves between those ideas of tragedy and humor.
I think visual art is a successful conduit for humor because art doesn’t have to be anything. It takes me back to the Magritte “This is Not a Pipe” painting. It’s not a pipe, it can’t be, and that’s why it’s funny. It doesn’t have the power to become the thing that it’s pretending to be. That kind of limit makes it inherently funny or uncanny.
For me, art has to be funny. There has to be something that doesn’t sit right with the viewer. I think humor comes from self-awareness, and that self-awareness is always what I’m looking for in a successful work of art. Works that are too delusional without being participatory in their delusion start to fall apart for me.
