With so many different identities, it’s a wonder Kalup Linzy can keep track of who he is supposed to be at any one time. The New York-based artist has no less than 22 alter-egos that he has carefully developed since he began the ongoing project in 2002, and while keeping all their individual soap opera storylines coherent moving forward must be a complex and demanding endeavour, at least Linzy’s life can never be boring.
Linzy draws on a performance background of theatre and choir, running his personas through real world scenes and testing them out in different scenarios as a screenwriter might. The characters range between the tragic, the naïve and the opportunistic, male and female, and are semi-autobiographical creations informed by a version of real life as seen through the melodramatic filter of daytime soaps — he even adopted a character for a cameo on long-running US soap General Hospital in 2010. Art.Jobs.Lullabies is Linzy’s latest project in which many of his creations come together through video, music, photography, collage and painting. Garis and Hahn plays host to this multi-disciplinary event until 2 May.
Kalu Linzy & Dan Colen
Sweet Liberty, 2015
C-Print, 20 x 30 inches
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
Kalup Linzy
Art Jobs and Lullabies (Covered and Remixed), Video Suite 2, 2015
Video, 37 minutes
Edition of 5 + 1 AP
Kalup Linzy
Longing, Love and Pussy, 2014
Photo collage and gouache on canvas
24 x 36 inches
Kalup Linzy
Kaye Covers ‘Asshole’, 2015
C-Print, 42 x 56 inches
Edition of 5 + 5 AP
Kalup Linzy
A Date, Lover and a Potential Husband, 2014
Photo collage and gouache on canvas
24 x 36 inches
Kalup Linzy
Art Jobs and Lullabies, Video Suite 1, 2015
Video, 20:20 minutes
Edition of 5 + 5AP
Kalup Linzy
Lily (A Cup of Tea), 2014
Photo collage and gouache on canvas
24 x 36 inches
