Art In Review: Peter McClennan and Elena SistoGermans Van Eck420 West Broadway (near Spring Street) |
This pleasant season's-end exhibition presents small
drawings by Elena Sisto and photographs by Peter McClennan. Ms. Sisto's
drawings have the presence of paintings; their surfaces are concentrated
monochromes that seem boiled down from larger works. Their pale colors
cover images lifted from cartoons and comic books. The scenes behind
the colors are hard to read, filled as they are with intimations of
violence, hilarity and personal strife. Looking at them is a little
like hearing a fight in the next apartment. The mind struggles to pin
down the narrative, but can't. Two things remain: the essential mysteriousness
of other people's lives, and the seductiveness of paint. For his "displaced
portraits", Mr. McClennan takes photographs of homeless people
as they sleep on city benches and streets, and then inserts their forms
into photographs of peaceful natural settings. These range from a surface
of giant leaves and couchlike bushes to a desert oasis. The images
are both funny and sympathetic. It is as if Mr. McClennan's subjects
have dreamed themselves into more accomodating surroundings. -Roberta Smith |