Christine Bisetto: Trace

by Johnny Robertson June 2, 2003

A few years ago, a friend and I were coaxed off a Hong Kong street into a Hong Kong alley by the silhouette of a ’66 fastback: a familiar shape in an exotic surrounding.

Christine Bisetto, Ants, 2003... latex, carbon on paper... 58 x 35 inches


We examined the machine neatly tucked under some bamboo scaffolding (it was a daily driver, but very cherry) and we proceeded to exchange our respective hot rod experiences. Within a few moments, a young woman came out and explained her father was businessman and dabbled in movie making. They had just finished a picture and the car was a sweet souvenir. Anyway, turns out the woman, Sil, was an artist, and we spent the afternoon looking at her sketchbook and a large notebook of drawings.

Sil had taken Peanuts comic strips and redrawn hundreds of them, one after the other, page after page. The text was Chinese. The run-on strip was visually striking, but I assumed the dialog had been changed and there was some form of subversion or at least corrupt irony at hand. Since I cannot read Chinese, I wasn’t getting it. I was wrong, she explained, the dialog had merely been translated. O.K… re-contextualization (like the Mustang); American cartoon characters doing funny things, speaking a foreign dialect? Wrong again. “Repetition with variation” she said. Ah yes, I said, the “cornerstone of beginning design;” yes, I see. The formal synchronicity was purposefully hidden under a burden of over-intellectual engagement. The point was simply to accentuate, by methodical reproduction, the reoccurring shapes of Charlie Brown and his cohorts. The guts of her work resided in the periphery of the obvious, and they sort of got squished out the sides like condiments on a sandwich.

Christine Bisetto, Bee Pod, 2003... wood, drywall, latex, paper, wire, silicon... 23 x 23 x 22 inches

I reflected on that afternoon in Hong Kong as I walked through Mulcahy Modern Gallery in Oak Cliff gazing on the work of Christine Bisetto, the Fort Worth artist known for her skillful handling of delicate materials. The gallery is showing new pieces in an exhibition called TRACE. Insect silhouettes cut out of painted paper have taken over the gallery space. Hundreds of various types of bug-shapes, in careful formal choreography, are positioned in various ways throughout the exhibition. Some are negative-space compositions on paper, others are floating off the walls, and still others find themselves confined in vessels made of scrap materials. There is no creepy-crawly atmosphere or sense of scientific observation. The winged subjects are an extension of the artist quiet confidence in manipulating form.

Like the experience in Hong Kong, my immediate inclination is to organize the levels of visual information within the Bisetto’s art. Similarly, the process is confounded by a shift in the hierarchy of meaningful signifiers. Bissetto’s insects are denied a portion their identity and common context and reduced, like Charlie Brown, to casual shapes. The familiarity of the Peanuts comic strips is challenged when their form is elevated in importance beyond the idea of them. I mean, butterflies and bees, big deal, but five hundred is either eerie, like an invasion, or moot, like, say, bathroom wallpaper. Neither is the case here. Although benign, the shapes extend themselves as meaningful carriers of Bisetto’s specific formal idea. The casual combination of things like color, shadow, and mass reproduction reinforce the sensitive use of form. The power in Bisetto’s work is in the subtle abrading of recognizable subject matter and formal application.

I remember wondering how Sil’s work would be received by someone who could read Chinese. I realized that the Chinese characters added a certain spark that the rounder, softer English equivalent would have lacked. Beyond international readability, her art-making decisions were right on. Bisetto’s work has that same sort of confidence and evidence of artistic completeness. There is a sense that she can manipulate any material, six legged or otherwise into her art.

Images courtesy the artist and Mulcahy Modern Gallery.

Johnny Robertson is a writer and artist living in Dallas, Texas.

0 comment

Leave a Comment

Funding generously provided by: