Performances by Larry Krone and Kalup Linzy

Performances by Larry Krone and Kalup Linzy

Saturday, May 14, 2022
2-4pm EST

Left: Kalup Linzy as Taiwan Braswell in OK. Video still. Courtesy of the artist and David Castillo / Right: Larry Krone by Christian Holland.

Please join us at The 8th Floor for two new performances by Larry Krone and Kalup Linzy exploring how we find love in biological, fictional, and chosen family structures. These performances were originally scheduled alongside our exhibition Kindred Solidarities but were postponed due to Covid-19. We’re excited to safely host this event now at The 8th Floor, in conjunction with our current exhibition Articulating Activism. Please find our current Covid-19 policy, accessibility info, and more details on visiting here.

2pm: Larry Krone, Loving You is Easier

Loving You is Easier is the third in a series of scripted musical performances on the theme of personal identity by Larry Krone. Preceded by Who or What I Am, presented at Joe’s Pub in 2018, and Beyond Repair, presented at the RISD Museum in 2019, this new work will focus on the individual in the context of family. This entertaining and thought-provoking 40-minute extravaganza will take the audience through the painful dissolution of failed biological family dynamics and the work it takes to rebuild a new, healthier family unit based on love. Consistent with his practice over the past 25 years, Krone expresses himself in Loving You is Easier through a concert format, performing his original country songs interspersed with storytelling.

Please note that Krone’s performance will include language and nudity that may not be suitable for children.

3pm: Kalup Linzy, The State of my Feelings and Emotions…

In The State of my Feelings and Emotions… multidisciplinary artist Kalup Linzy will perform as his alter-ego Taiwan Braswell. The new piece will feature tunes from his repertoire, alongside yet to be released material. The character is a member of Linzy’s Queen Rose family, whose sagas have been the mainstay subject of his irreverent video works. Modeled after soap operas, his cast of characters feature the artist in a variety of guises playing real and invented relations. Linzy’s work explores the love and loss inherent in real, fictional, and chosen familial structures through performance, film, and collaged paintings.

Please note that Linzy’s performance will include language that may not be suitable for children.

Biographies

Larry Krone is an artist/entertainer who straddles the worlds of art, music, performance, and design. Beginning in ​the New York art world of the late 90’s, Larry's home-spun costumed, staged musical shows were concept-based art performances that explored showmanship and masculine identity in country music. Now, Larry has a presence in New York's downtown scene as a singer, songwriter, performer, and costume designer as well as for his work as a fine artist. Larry has performed at The RISD Museum, The Whitney Museum, Joe’s Pub, PS 122 and countless bars, galleries, and nightclubs in New York and elsewhere. He can be heard on the albums of Jim Andralis, Clint Michigan, Bridget Everett and the Tender Moments, Champagne Jerry, and Stephin Merritt and appears​ in the independent film, The Purple Onion, singing his original song "It’s Hard to Live”. As a designer ​Larry is known for his fashion label House of Larréon, the exclusive couturier for Bridget Everett and designer of gowns, costumes, and sets for various performers and artists including Jim Andralis, ​Neal Medlyn, Adrienne Truscott, Kathleen Hanna, and Dawn Landes. larrykrone.com

Kalup Linzy is a video and performance artist born in Clermont, Florida and raised in Stuckey, Florida.  Linzy received his MFA from the University of South Florida in 2003. He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Linzy has been the recipient of numerous awards including a grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Creative Capital Foundation grant, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, an Art Matters Grant, The Headlands Center for the Arts Alumni Awards Residency, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Film and Video, BAU Institute Travel Grant, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Linzy's best-known work is a series of politically charged videos that satirize the conventions of the television soap opera. His work has been included in exhibitions Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Prospect.1 New Orleans, 30 Americans, Rubell Family Collection, MoMA PS1 Greater New York, At Home/Not At Home: Works from the Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College. His work is in the public collections at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Whitney Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Birmingham Museum of Art, The Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, and the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester. In summer 2010, Linzy appeared on the long-running ABC soap opera General Hospital alongside James Franco in a story line that incorporated performance art. Linzy’s film and performance work has been supported by the Sundance Institute and Film Festival, Tribeca Film Institute, London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and the AFI Festival. Linzy is represented by the David Castillo Gallery in Miami, Florida and The Breeder Gallery in Athens, Greece.  He serves on the board of the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts in Tampa and the Community Advisory Council of the USF Contemporary Art Museum and Graphicstudio.  He is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellowship Arts Integration Grantee.  In 2021, he founded the Queen Rose Art House, an artist residency and social space in Tulsa, Oklahoma. kaluplinzystudio.com