Elena Sisto Discusses Autobiographical Shift and Artistic Influences in Studio Interview

Elena Sisto's exhibition 'Afternoons' ran at Lori Bookstein Fine Art from March 17 to April 23, 2016. In an interview with Leslie Wayne, Sisto explained her move from depicting female archetypes to self-portraiture, focusing on her studio practice. Her work draws from a family background steeped in psychoanalytic discussion, though she consciously shifted toward emotionality and the physical pleasure of paint. Sisto cited her father's career as an aeronautical engineer as a major influence, comparing fluid mechanics to the movement of paint and form. She discussed the importance of Cubism's structural innovations, naming contemporaries like Alexi Worth, Carroll Dunham, Judith Linhares, Katherine Bradford, Tom Burckhardt, Elliot Green, and Dana Schutz as working within that tradition. The artist's recent paintings feature extreme close-ups of hands and compressed spaces influenced by cartoons, avoiding narrative to emphasize emotion, light, and abstraction. Sisto works primarily upstate, where she finds clarity, though she brings paintings to New York City for review. Her dog Busby appears in the work, and she keeps prisms in her studio windows. Historical references in her practice include Giorgio Morandi, Henri Matisse, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, and Philip Guston.