Test Your Strength

Basswood
11.125 x 6.375 x 6.5 in
28.3 x 16.2 x 16.5 cm
2008

Richard Humann • Test Your Strength • Basswood • 11.125 x 6.375 x 6.5 in • 2008

In Test Your Strength, Richard Humann transforms a familiar carnival game into a darkly comic confrontation with the moral weight of execution. In the traditional attraction, participants strike a circular metal plate with a large wooden hammer, attempting to propel a marker up a vertical scale to ring a bell at the top. In Humann’s basswood sculpture, the game’s mechanism instead triggers a guillotine, replacing a test of physical power with an instrument of death. The sculpture’s playful form and recognizable carnival imagery create an unsettling contrast with its violent implications.

Part of the series You Must Be This Tall, the work turns on the double meaning of its title. At the carnival, testing one’s strength is a straightforward physical challenge: the participant measures personal force against a mechanical target, competing for the satisfaction of reaching the mark. In Humann’s version, the test becomes psychological and ethical. The question is no longer how hard one can strike, but whether one possesses the inner strength to become an executioner and accept responsibility for another person’s death.

Dark humor emerges from the absurdity of this transformation. The familiar promise of a carnival game—to have fun, demonstrate strength, and perhaps impress an audience—is carried to its grotesque extreme. The hammer becomes the trigger for a guillotine, turning a playful gesture into an imagined act of execution. The sculpture’s miniature, handcrafted quality heightens the incongruity, allowing an almost whimsical object to convey a disturbing moral question. The humor does not diminish the violence; instead, it makes the encounter more unsettling by inviting the viewer to recognize the joke before confronting what lies beneath it.

As with the other works in You Must Be This Tall, Test Your Strength exposes the uneasy relationship between public entertainment and institutional violence. By turning a game of physical prowess into a test of moral responsibility, Humann asks whether the exercise of power should be mistaken for strength, or whether genuine strength lies in the willingness to question authority and confront the consequences of one’s actions. The result is a playful but pointed satire in which amusement and horror become inseparable.

Photo credit: Joseph Silva / Richard Humann Studio