Untitled Painting from Ed's Bauwerke Series
FINAL WEEKEND! GO NOW!
Ed Lisieski has a fondness for the war box, the ranch home, the simple shapes that defined post-war housing. I have written about Ed Lisieski’s paintings before here and here, but this latest hanging shows a dark departure from the previous work. Gone is the humor and the lightness to work, now replaced with distinct melancholy of impermanence.
As a show it’s not deep (enough), and I’d have liked very much to see more examples of his work as Bauwerke shows an artist emeshed in process: there are the buildings, the bones, and then the ghost of them. In a larger show, we might better understand the how the artist paints through the form, seeking the best representation of “house” or “home”, but alas, in this small set of paintings all we grasp at is that the artist has been fundamentally changing the way he has been painting and exploring the same object for well on a decade.
I would suggest that in this small sample, we’re witnessing is perhaps the end of the form for Ed. It’s not clear where he might take it next. He worked in constructions, in bright palettes, and in this show, we’re looking at lines, structure and finally erasure. It’s lovely stuff and his material is as rightly jagged as ever.
This is the first show where I was vastly stuck by the difference in luminance between the show poster and the actual work. Perhaps it has taken many years longer than other lookers, but the truth is now I am most used to seeing work through my monitor and with this work, done in blacks, is much duller and contains a different type of question (burnt), than how it represents on the screen, it’s blacks glowing, rich, and deep. This wasn’t high contrast work in person and in that light. What I am struggling with is that it was fundamentally very different in person, so that where I was expecting drama, I got conversation.
Go see them:
Caffe Ladro
108 Union Street
Seattle, WA 98101
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