Alex Tatarsky, Sad Boys in Harpy Land
January 15, 20267:30 pm - 8:30 pm
January 16, 20267:30 pm - 8:30 pm
January 17, 20267:30 pm - 8:30 pm
About the Performance
Confronting anguish through humor, Sad Boys in Harpy Land is a semi-autobiographical clown show about self-doubt and the artist’s journey. Through a series of existential vignettes, self-proclaimed “experimental clown artist” Alex Tatarsky fuses together fragments of their own story with those of equally tormented protagonists. Drawing on sources including Goethe, Dante, and Seinfeld, Tatarsky explores assumptions around identity to present a splintering coming-of-age tale that challenges the idea of individual malady and embraces the messiness of shared struggle. At once a guttural scream and a bellowing laugh, Tatarsky encapsulates the deranged experience of living in this world and finding art along the path.
About the Artist
Alex Tatarsky makes performances in the uncomfortable in-between zone of comedy, dance-theater, performance art, and deluded rant, sometimes with songs. Playing with perceptions of language and narrative structure, their live performances are highly response to venue and audience, often breaking the fourth wall and embracing humor to reveal vulnerability and humanity. Recent works include DIRT TRIP (MoMA PS1), Untitled Freakout (The Kitchen), Buttplug Gnome (Gibney Dance), and Americana Psychobabble (La Mama, Jacob’s Pillow). They have been a Pew Fellow, a Movement Research artist-in-residence, a curatorial fellow at The Poetry Project, an Independence Fellow, a Jilline Ringle artist-in-residence, and was a featured artist in The Whitney Biennial 2024. Along with artist Ming Lin, Tatarsky is one half of Shanzhai Lyric and its fictional office Canal Street Research Association, with recent presentations at Sculpture Center, Artists Space, Henry Moore Institute, Storefront for Art & Architecture, and Greater NY at MoMA PS1.