Beyond the Fields We Know
ESMoA curator Bernhard Zuenkeler, left, with artist Michael Sistig. Photo
“Matter,” a solo show devoted to Michael Sistig, opens Sunday at ESMoA
A finished canvas by German artist Michael Sistig is a great deal more than a flat surface covered with paint. His work is often like a bowl of soup with many ingredients floating in it, a small cluster of objects here, some over there, popping into focus as the eye roams up and down and side to side. Sistig’s human figures resemble the little squiggles we see when we look at a slide under a microscope.
About two dozen of his pictures go on view Sunday at ESMoA, the El Segundo Museum of Art, the venue’s first solo show devoted to a living artist. Sistig, however, has previously been shown in El Segundo, most famously with “Anti-Ark,” his installation on the beach comprised of four shipping containers, an alluring siren, and a wilting polar bear.
Although still a young man, Sistig (b.1982) has been pursuing some age-old themes as well as investigating — through his work — the kinds of questions about the universe seemingly reserved for cosmologists and physicists and others in the scientific community.
A theory of everything?
“M-Theorie” (2013-14), by Michael Sistig
It’s been just within the last few years, Michael Sistig says while sitting in the upstairs office at ESMoA, that his main themes have shifted from the mythological and the philosophical to an exploration of the inner workings of the world we live in. And I do mean inner workings: neutrons and electrons, atoms and quasars, all that interstellar glue that keeps us and the galaxies in place or together. “I’m always interested in things I really don’t understand,” he says, and this led him to the opinions “of scientists and physicists who are interested to get one theory for the whole universe.”
The Grand Unification Theory, it’s been called, a kind of Holy Grail that, if discovered, will unite and bring together all the basic principles and laws that govern the way things work. To better understand the nature of the search, Sistig has been reading Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku and other writers. “It’s now called the M-theory,” he says, “but nobody knows what the M stands for. So maybe it’s mystery, maybe it’s magic.” (Edward Witten, the guy behind the theory, also adds “membrane” as a third M)
“A lot of people are looking into that theory,” says curator Bernhard Zuenkeler, “but nobody has made the connection between the theory of relativity and the quantum physical world. It’s still all in the mists where it goes.”
Sistig admits that he doesn’t understand much of the scientific formulae, but he’s been looking to gain an overview, “especially in physics because I have the feeling that this is (what) our whole future and development is based on.”
“M-Theorie” (2013-14), detail, by Michael Sistig
Diving into the canvas
I’m not sure if we could call it the crowning point of the show, but Sistig’s “M-Theorie,” which was painted over ten months during 2013-2014, is quite likely the largest painting that ESMoA has ever exhibited (if we exclude the wall-to-wall, and floor, murals of “Scratch,” when the gallery was turned over to many of L.A.’s best-known graffiti artists).
“M-Theorie” has the 19th century proportions and visual “smack” of, let’s say, Géricault’s “Raft of the Medusa.”
In an open letter to Sistig published in a pamphlet two years ago when “M-Theory” was displayed in Cologne (where Sistig lives), Zuenkeler said, “What are the limits of knowledge? Can this be captured in pictures?” before adding, “you have taken the risk of shedding light on the reasons behind chaos.”
For the viewer, there are many ways to approach the painting. As we follow Sistig’s brushstrokes, which lead us to people, singular or in groups, in poses or positions that are metaphorical or symbolic, we may find ourselves wandering and exploring as in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister novels. It could be, as Zuenkeler notes, “Perhaps the law of the cosmos is the law of divergence.”
Artist Michael Sistig, in front of “Gasänge der Gottesteilchen 2” (2011). Photo
Sistig’s mingling of abstract and figurative elements is unique, Zuenkeler says. “On the other hand it goes back a long, long way in art. We talked about Hieronymus Bosch this morning, and I feel there are a lot of elements of Bosch in there.”
“Gesange der Gottesteilchen 14” (2012), by Michael Sistig
That is to say, a narrative element. Going back to the Middle Ages if not further, when most people were unable to read, paintings had to convey their messages (or morals) visually. That’s one reason why, in many old paintings, and the life of Christ is a good example, the same person is often seen in several places on the same canvas, even at different times of their life. I’m not suggesting that Sistig was thinking of this or of Bosch while he was painting, but it’s almost like his picture can be read the same way.
Because of each picture’s size, and then the often miniscule figures within, the viewer needs to zoom in and out of Sistig’s work. It’s kind of like having to move from the microscope to the telescope in order to get both the detail and the overview. Also, our perspective or point of view isn’t fixed, but as with Norbert Tadeusz (given a posthumous show at ESMoA last year), who often put his figures on circus rings suspended from the ceiling, Sistig’s characters are seen from all angles. It may give us a sense of floating over or through his work.
We should be careful, of course, of becoming embroiled in the theoretical at the expense of the aesthetic, because if the pictures do not work for us artistically then we have no reason to care what kind of ideas or notions the artist has in mind. But fortunately Sistig’s pictures are compelling and one wants to spend time in front of them. While hesitant to label these works, I’d say they lean heavily towards the surreal, and it’s not hard to glimpse similarities with the paintings of Salvador Dalí and Yves Tanguy. That said, a Sistig is a Sistig: He’s following his own muse, as it were.
In many if not most cases, the abstracted landscape is applied to the canvas and then Sistig adds the figures. Zuenkeler sees a bit of a scientific approach in this, as if Sistig has dropped his little people onto a planet that they now have to explore for themselves, although of course it is really Sistig who is vicariously doing the exploring. At a further remove, we the viewer are invited to explore as well, and if the figures are to be regarded as hieroglyphs or symbols, perhaps we will decipher a few to our personal satisfaction.
Yet even if we come away empty-handed, so to speak, we will have entered the dialogue that Sistig began, and I imagine he will be quite pleased about that.
Matter, a solo show devoted to painter Michael Sistig, opens Sunday at ESMoA, 208 Main St., El Segundo. Hours, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with curatorial remarks at 2 p.m. Call (424) 277-1020 or go to esmoa.org.