Artists Michael Smith and William Wegman — both of whom use conceptual humor as an art-making strategy — collaborated on this satirical commentary on photography, the process of image-making, and the interchange of "high" art and "low" culture. The tape is structured as an instructional guide...
A parodic music video that re-envisions the Horatio Alger myth of the American Dream via 1950s-style cultural cliches, advertising and Reagan-era media propaganda. Smith's 'regular guy' Mike embodies a series of all-American male stereotypes, from the classroom to political candidacy, assuming the...
Another regular evening at Mike's house turns into a comic nightmare. Finding himself a stranger in his own apartment, a "world totally fashioned from the effluvia of TV and pop music," Mike is plagued by a mysterious drop ceiling, his dry cleaning, and a host of ghostly visitors. This postmodern...
This piece documents one of Smith's earliest performances of his "Baby Ikki" character, in which he performs in public as an oversized infant in diaper, hat and sunglasses.
Produced by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Smith's short video parodies the sort of cultural and educational programming interlude that one might see on European or American public television. Famous Quotes From Art History presents the bon mots of Henri Matisse as drolly recited, in French, by...
Performance artists Smith and Skinner use heavily coded comedic costumes and performance, including extensive play with puppets, to articulate the simultaneous banality and ironic reflexivity of "popular comedy."
