Elvis finds Jesse, Jesse finds Jesus: New work by Jesse McCloskey

What does it mean to be a working artist? Days, many days, alone, in the studio. There are other modes of artmaking—the smart ones in contemporary art seem to have fashioned more fun practices…ones that revolve around notions of team sports (the Starns Twins recent scaffolding adventures), cooking (Rirkrit’s Thai lunches), and dancing (the year of Trisha at the Walker/Drawing Center/BAM). Still, for the few, the stubborn, the proud, to make work means going into a room, closing the door, and pounding your fists on the wall until you’ve stirred up enough plaster dust to call it art. Elvis, in a manner, has been doing that with the books and the drawings etc, but he’s still learning his way. For a lesson in dedication, he ventured out of his studio, across the burg, and down Grand Street, to visit a master of the pound and paint technique.

“Cut and paste, cut and paste. That’s all I do all day,” Jesse McCloskey confessed. Jesse’s not an undergrad stealing term papers off the internet, he’s a painter that comes to the canvas with a unique method of applique: vinyl-painted paper swatches collaged onto canvas. There’s a carpet of Flashe paint shards on the floor, sheets of bright colors ready to be diced on a side table. The pile-up of bright, flat colors plus solid black—his stroke color of choice—makes for canvases that look, formally, like a nuked comic book…comics that are suddenly three stories tall and glowing neon, with a torn shirt and smoke coming out of his nose. Case in point:

The black and bright are a good match for his new paintings: Jesse’s done found Jesus. As for the bold black lines—on both his paintings, and handpainted prints—here’s a little stained glass church window in them, but the reference’s a little more loaded than a leaded rose window…See, it’s not the first time McCloskey and JC have met: the artist grew up in a devoutly Catholic home, complete with midnight devil raids (“get up! get up! the devil’s in the house and he’s… BEHIND YOUR CHAIR!”) and a shoebox of Jack Chick you-might-go-to-hell-if-you-don’t-wise-up comic books. Jesse nods back to the scrappy, thumbsized comics in many of his new compositions (see the “lake of fire” bubbling up on a couple canvases), but there’s one big difference between Jesse and Jack. Jack makes his protagonists mild-mannered Christians who tremble with fear, repent like the devil, and beg for forgiveness when it comes to reckoning time. With Jesse, it’s artist vs. Jesus in a throwdown, knock-out fight.

Let’s hope for the next round soon. In the meantime, Elvis says Godspeed, Jesse, and keep on pounding.