Friday, June 28, 1991
Art In Review: Peter McClennan and Elena Sisto
Germans Van Eck
420 West Broadway (near Spring Street)
Manhattan
Through Wednesday
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
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