Volume 6 Number 1
Carol Kino writes of life and death in the New York art scene and
all the gore and violence in between.
I thoroughly enjoyed Elena Sisto's work (Germans van Eck). Though
her paintings make heavy use of cartoon imagery, she certainly goes
against the current trend by treating this popular subject-matter unironically.
Her last show focused on childhood, using Donald Duckand the well-known
(in America) Nancy; now she's moved on to womanhood and sexuality,
taking bosomy '50s-era bimbos as her archetypes. I remember, back in
the deep past, a couple of books of such sophisticated drawings on
my parents' coffee table, and thesepaintings--with their half-humorous
assemblages of inflated-looking ladies tangled up with, or presiding
bustily over, mysterious serpentine shapes- pin down precisely the
sort of powerful subjects the originalsmade me wonder about. These
small, compact oils are so beautifully painted; Sisto's expressively
layered surface can look as much like cartoons (the older sort) as
scrawlings on a wall, striking an interestingnote between found object
and fine art.
ArtNews February 1993
Volume 92, Number 92
Elena Sisto
Germans Van Eck
In the past Elena Sisto has used the popular cartoon character Nancy
to represent herself as a little girl. In this show, Nancy appeared only
once. Sisto continued her obliquely autobiographical explorations by
using a group of less famous, though equally familiar-looking, cartoon
images to suggest a young girl's amazement and bewilderment upon reaching
puberty.
In these marvelously rich small works, done in tempra or casein, images
from 1950's cartoons simultaneously emerge from, and disappear beneath,
the sweet, appealing pastel colors. The females are mostlycurvaceous,
cheerful "bimbo' types, but there are other stereotypes of women,
including the spinster and the battle-axe wife-mother. Males are present
primarily as voyeurs--goofy young guys, physicians, or paunchy businessmen
with glasses. In Eeny Weeny Bit,one can see a guy with martinis on a
table, a woman being hit on the head and dragged away by a caveman, and
a prisoner hanging. Pink and Black has at least three sets of doctors
with glasses, each examining ahuge-breasted woman. And in What to Want,
the figure of a voluptuous woman opens up into a pleasant, decorative,
framelike shape. Eyes are everywhere: men looking at women, women comparing
themselves with other women, and the implied sense of a teenager wondering
who she is and what she will become. Despite the variety of imagery,
there is never a clear narrative or message. The scale of images shifts
dramatically within a single work; and figures do not always follow the
laws of anatomy. Surfaces are jazzed up by decorative shapes: balloon-like
discs and bursts of color that fracture space, hide forms, and undercut
any quest for specific meaning. Yet each work is rich with humor and
poignancy, social commentary and camouflaged personal revelation.
-Ruth Bass |
Elena Sisto's new paintings have assumed
a distinct political content. While still drawing on the cartoon-type
imagery she has employed in the past, her new work has moved beyond
the re-enactment of her own sexual fears and anxieties to more topical
and universal issues relating to the male misuse and objectification
of women. To this emotional subject matter, Sisto brings a sense of
reserve and seeming detachment which allows for greater candor and
more impact.
All of the paintings in this exhibition operated with a certain degree
of irony. Painted in tempera on wood, and in colors confined to soft,
translucent shades of pink, yellow and blue, each panel is pervaded
by a jewel-like luminosity. To these rich and visually seductive surfaces
are added figures and forms which play out narratives of sexual domination.
In Eve, (1991), the prototypical woman is portrayed as a cartoon bimbo
straight out of pornographic magazines from the 50's. Juxtaposed to
a colossal snake (which also doubles as a phallus), she is all temptress,
with bulbous breasts and exaggerated hips. The same figures reappear
in Oh! Doctor (1991), only here the snake has grown even larger in
size and the cartoon pastiche of woman as vacuous-sex-object is conflated
with the image of a physician, his eyes aligned with the level of her
vagina.
While these paintings playfully tease the viewer withtheir color and
radience, there is no mistaking Sisto's feminism. The alluring washes
of paint in these panels are cosmetic and contrived rather thanthe
outcome of any sincere and serious interest in extending the language
of painting. Along with Sisto's approriation of ditzy blondes, these
superficially decorative features are meant to call into question the
essentially male construction of art and beauty. In What to Want (1992),
a biomorphic, globular form (which looks like it could have come from
a painting by Carroll Dunham) is combined with bits and pieces of female
anatomy-legs and breasts predominate. These fragments are either superimposed
on one other or matched randomly, as if to underscore the irrationality
and emotional poverty of male sexual fantasy. Another layer of meaning
is also attached tothe seeming chaos of these compositions: the disconnected
imagery studiedly mocks the stylistic features of the work of a number
of male artists, such as David Salle, who formed a current of art-world
patriarchy.
Unlike other feminist artists such as Sue Williams who have taken
on issues of sexism and female subjugation, Sisto's painting is devoid
of rancor. While both artists have used the same bimbo-type charecter,
Sisto's approach is more analytical and intellectual. Her vantage point
allows for greater elaboration on the cultural and historic conditions
which have contributed to gender differences and the still-diminished
place of women.
-Debra Bricker Balken
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