ED BISESE: HUMOR PAINFULLY RENDERED
By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 12, 2006
In an e-mail invitation, Ed Bisese refers to his paintings, a dozen of which are on view at Bethesda's Gallery Neptune, as "dopey." It's more than a self-deprecating aside. There's something dumb -- albeit charmingly so -- about his series of (typically striding) men, rendered in the artist's signature style of cartoonish representation. Pasty and out of shape, and bulging in strange places as if they were fashioned of papier-mache that the artist has ironed flat, Bisese's subjects are, as often as not, caught in the middle of something silly: struggling to remove a mask while wearing pajamas ("Caper"); swatting away a flock of attacking black birds ("OK"); or walking clueless and shirtless down the street ("Perfect Garage"). One is simply called "Will'm Hung," in an apparent nod to the infamous "American Idol"-born butcher of American pop songcraft.
Yet there has always been a kind of pain that underlies the jokiness in Bisese's work, whose angst-ridden subtext troubles the viewer after whatever punch line the artist has thrown falls with a splat. His paintings may be goofs, but, like Chaplin's little tramp, they have a sober side, too.
Several are apparent portraits. In addition to Hung, Bisese captures a doddering Henri Matisse waiting by the phone; Richmond folk artist Abe Criss hobbling with a cane in one hand and a jack-o'-lantern in the other; and someone named John Johnson scurrying past an empty bookcase and file cabinet. All, however, might be said to represent Man under circumstances of constraint. Man hemmed in not just by fences ("Chupacabra") or by offstage lawmen in hot pursuit ("Stealing") but, at a minimum, by their own bodies.
Here, age does not bring wisdom, but loneliness and infirmity. Corporeality does not signal the pleasures or possibilities of the flesh, but its oppression. These are not people who are confident, let alone comfortable, in their own skins.
Call them Pagliaccis: clowns who make us laugh, even as their hearts -- and bodies -- are breaking.
ED BISESE: A PERFECT GARAGE Through May 27 at Gallery Neptune, 4808 Auburn Ave., Bethesda (Metro: Bethesda). 301-718-0809.http://www.galleryneptune.com. Open Thursday-Saturday noon to 6. Free.