Review Magazine October 15, 1998

New Art Examiner

Elena Sisto
Littlejohn Contemporary

By Douglas Maxwell

While looking at the new iconic portraits by Elena Sisto at Littlejohn, I was struck by just how good a painter she is. Sisto demonstrates her ability to paint in what amounts to an intentionally idiosyncratic style applied to seemingly generic subjects.

At first, the compositions look rather simple- a single figure on an abstract ground- but Sisto's brushwork is infused with a constant edginess suggesting a psychological exploration is in order.The subjects here are various stock charecters from fairy tales and lore, but rendered with a twist making them Jungian archtypes. For example, Valiant, 1998stands for the hero, and yet his lips are so red, it'sas if he is wearing lipstick. Sisto seems intent on exploring how as children our imaginations create a certain image of a fairy tale charecter which we then carry unchanged into adulthood. One of Freud's most potent concepts was the repetition compulsion which tells us how we are constantly making others into those who we know from childhood (a mother, a father,a traumatizing figure) and repeating behaviors with them with oftentimes less than positive results. By personalizing her subjects, Sisto challenges these stereotypes. For example, in the Giant's Son, 1988, a bully archetype, is a looming larger-than-life figure who seems to have no idea what to do with his body. In fact, despite his size, he seems bossed around and at the mercy of the space into which Sisto has painted him. This leaves him being a real kid with plenty of fragility and insecurity.

Then there is Finn McCool, 1998. I could not get over the mesmerizing way Sisto has painted has painted his one eye (he is in profile). It is blue and just a dab which gives the figure an uncanny three-dimensional quality. Sisto told me that McCool is a mythical Irish giant, a hero figure, who was actually not so brave. On being informed that another giant was coming to get him, he was so frightened that he dressed up like a baby so not to be identified. When the other giant saw Finn he thought that if this baby was Finn's child, Finn himself must really be enormous, and he got the hell out of there. In Sisto's hands, McCool almost seems like a transvestite with very effeminate features adding an ambivalent quality to his already reluctant character. Like the Giant's son, he seems not to have a clue as to how he arrived at his position in life. Sisto's female figures are just as compelling. First I marvelled at the way the Princess, 1998 was composed. My immediate impression was that she is a simple yet imposing figure on an abstract monochromatic ground. But on closer examination, it becomes clear that specific areas-her left shoulder for example-are painted in such a way that they recede into a deeper space than than the background, creating a visual complexity only matched by the psychological one. The princess appears so troubled that somehow happily-ever-after hardly seems a possibility. Perhaps the memory of the tragedy of Princess Di has left an indelible mark on our collective psyches, creating a new stereotype for "the princess". And like her male figures, Sisto's Princess' sex seems a touch ambivalent. Does she or doesn't she have breasts?

In Princess and Stepmother, 1998, Sisto demonstrates that these stereotypes which we use generation after generation to teach children good, bad, and the myth of happily ever after are, in fact, more psychologically complex. Why is the Princess always sweet and innocent and the Stepmother always wicked? In fact, what's to prevent one of them from having both roles? In the hands of Sisto, the roles are easily inter-changeable, but isn't that the point when looking at archetypes (or following the repetition compulsion)? Looks can be very deceiving. Finally, a last word about Sisto's painting style. I have been following Sisto's work for several years, back to when her paintings included cartoon charecters intermingled in a stream of consciousness which she seemed to use to provide a freedom and openness. I always felt that this style was better suited to Sisto's drawings and that her paintings were one step behind. Now, her paintings have taken a major leap. I cannot help but believe that the development of her subject matter also was effected by circumstances in her own life. The cartoon imagery seemed derived, at least in part, from the general cultural milieu whereas now the portraits seem intentionally motivated, no doubt in part driven by her own role as a mother.

By infusing a sense of freedom and looseness into her brushwork, and combining it with the reduction of imagery to a single figure on a ground, she has created works of resonant visual and psychological depth and freshness. -------

Elena Sisto
Littlejohn Contemporary

by Ann Shostrom

In "Fairy Tales", Elena Sisto paints with a bold new simplicity. Each canvas presents one character from the familiar stories against a plain ground. Sisto pushes and pulls the paint, creating ambiguities of pictorial space that opens up her paintings to deeper realms of interpretation than previously available. The contrast between each character's static pose and the dynamic paint handling provides the key to the real subject of these portraits. Sisto's vigorous engagement with paint, laid down a la prima, wet into wet, mimics the inner contortions that fue self-transformation. Here, transformation is achieved through technique. By painting with precise observation, she turns form into content. Stories of shape-shifting abound in fairy tales. Sisto's characters appear to change gender or even species before our eyes. This instability of the image is what underpins our complex response. In Princess, a stark white ruff casts its pearly reflection under the heroine's chin, who is otherwise in shadow. In this accurate appraisal of a figure in a colored field, Sisto uses reflected light to achieve believable space. She then turns this Princess sullen and reveals a beast within the beauty. Prompted by another image, we imagine Prince Valiant has come back from the wars a changed man. In the picture he is coarsened, now a pig in a black suit. Yet there is tenderness in his stricken expression. The broad animal features reveal a surprising delicacy of feeling. Stepmother shows Sisto at her most confident as a painter. This stark portrait emerges from darkness with striking effect. Her squared eyes are almost sculptural, mysterious packages that, instead of seeing outward, keep everything under wraps. As if screwed in too tightly, they follow us, setting up an uncanny force field between painting and viewer that collapses our eyes into hers. Sisto has conjured two images in one in Stepmother, a demonic child fights for possession of the visage of a \ hardened queen. Stepmother reminds us of Snow White's nemesis, who looks into the mirrow, only to project her "inner child". Mistaking her reflection for that of Snow White, she poisions the apple that she will soon give the apparition of her youthful self. It is a tragedy of misrecognition, a dialectical approach to fantasy that exposes our own multiple realities.

Ann Shostrom is an artist and writer based in New York.----------