history.sesow.com/Press Room/2003

Press archive · 2003

Coagula Magazine

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Sesow in Coagula 2003 (Los Angeles)

November 2003: Coagula Magazine (Los Angeles)

by Shana Nys Dambrot

All

paintings copyright Matt Sesow.

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DAMBROT...

‘Which brings us to a bizarre spoken word) experiment at Theatre of NOTE, “fucking ‘wasps", wherein the writer/director Steve Mor- ‘gan Haskell was apparently bent on presenting ‘an overt case of psychosexual repression as @ Viable worldview. Kinsey is most famous as the author of the so-called “Kinsey Report” aka. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. 1 think what the play wanted to accomplish, and ‘what makes it relevant to our consideration here today, is to express the idea that, Kinsey's ob- sessive brand of scientific inquiry could only have unfolded with the dawn of the 20th cen- tury, and only as the result of an intensely sup- pressed sexual identity, coupled with a progres- sive, scientific mind dedicated to overturning precisely that sort of suppression. He was the perfect case study fora symbolic anthropology ofthe lat fifty years, informed and constructed from untenable opposites: Religious dogma and sexual liberty, science and faith, reason and Tove, teuth-telling and popularity, His mind was a brilliant house divided against itself, and in the end it could not stand, Possibly in service of this idea, the actors’ deliveries were by and large didactic and expository rather than evoca- tive. They explained their positions to one an- ‘other endlessly, and with too much angry in-

Coagula Art Journal «

sistence. They failed to listen to one another, ‘The warm and often naked bodies onstage were in various stages of mortal combat with inhibi- tion, and just about everyone ended up on the losing side. Sound familia?

But there was an answer there that I wasn't looking for. The set consisted essentially of a blue piano and several immense paintings by D.C.-based anist Mat Sesow, which were com- mmissioned by the director for the production ‘These complex, savage, allegorical portraits not ‘only represented bu actually contained the en- tire psychological subtext of the play. Their vivid, unsetting presence gave the rigid agony ofthe performances acontext and a dignity that despite their best intentions they might not have achieved otherwise. The art was there to say no, that despite the defenses, controls and masks, inside everyone thee is a mass of tur- oil and contradiction, The paintings were an integral part of the content of the production, not just its style. They said more about the Kinsey the man than Kinsey himself ever could ‘That is exactly what I was looking for at the LAArt Show, what look for all the time now. Forartthat takes the human condition seriously, and engages with it, even at great risk o itself. Scsow puts it this way, and I'm sure some of the spirits haunting Santa Monica's Barker Hangar that weekend would agree: “It's a good time to paint, at least [for an anst] like me,

continues on page 36

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working from the emotional subconscious arena of my brain. People today have more data, more information. People die in war; people lie and it's immediately exposed. American artists that question our policies are in tune with the rest of the World, and they will be significant.” These paintings go a long way toward clarify- ing not only the play's message and moral’, but more broadly the role painting has played in the investigation of the fractured human con- sciousness as it has struggled to redefine itself in one of the most turbulent periods of human history,

36 Coagula Art Journal

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