Review

"Manguish: Invulnerable," Oil on Canvas.

Joshua Rizer
Mangst

11 a.m.-6 p.m.

The Late Show
1600 Cherry Street
Kansas City, MO
816.474.1300; 816.359.7174

Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday.
Runs through: March 26.

Artist's site: http://www.joshuarizer.com

Joshua Rizer has explored a lot of creative territory in his 34 years: composing, writing, filmmaking, drawing and painting.

If he ever decides to give comedy a shot, he'll be a natural. There's no one better in the regional art scene at taking angst and making it funny.

Sorry, not angst ... Mangst, as in the title of Rizer's collection of new oil paingins, now on display at the Late Show Gallery in the East Crossroads.

"Mangst,” a blend of the words "man" and "angst," was my attempt to loosely address how both a male’s strength and weakness can impair or debilitate, Rizer writes. More specifically, I was interested in the unsung and scorned emotional state of a man breaking down.

Add in manguish and manxiety, the other main themes of Rizer's show, and the subject just seems heavier and heavier by the moment. There's nothing light, after all, about the pressures men face: to provide but not dominate, to be strong and yet sensitive, and to know Exactly the Right Thing to Say, Just Like in the Movies.

(There are more, but space is limited and this isn't the time; suffice it to say, though, that Rizer's repeated use of a Superman-esque character is spot-on.)

So what does Rizer do? He makes the issue funny. Grim and twisted, absolutely, but still funny.

It's hard not to look at such works as Manguish: Invulnerable, pictured above, and not respond with some hybrid of gasp, grimace and laughter. In this, Rizer mines a decidedly black vein of humor ... but, hey, Stanley Kubrick made nuclear war hilarious and untold numbers of stand-up performers get laughs with material that's as much therapy as comedy.

(Backing up a bit for a disclaimer: Remember, kids, you are not Superman. In other words, don't try this at home.)

That's local poet Jason Ryberg in the blue-and-red getup, by the way.  ("No one else would put on the tights and go out in public," Ryberg cracked at the First Friday opening.) Rizer also puts in several appearances, further personalizing the show.

Visually, Rizer could have gone two directions with Mangst, and been fine going either way. The superhero material would have fit with the flat comic-panel imagery of Intrologue, his show last year at Mercy Seat. Instead, Rizer went with his distinctive (and self-taught) style, heavy on vivid colors and a strong interplay between light and shadow.

And if the impact is as much emotional as visual and intellectual, that's fine by him.

I don’t believe in, or agree with a lot of artistic jargon and rhetoric, he writes. Personally, I value the lowest common denominator of understanding over the elitism of high concept.  I sometimes hear people characterize accessible work as, “dumbed down,” but I believe archetypes, symbolism, myth and commentary can be sophisticated and approachable simultaneously.  I prefer communion over confusion.

As served by Rizer, this communion comes with sips of bittersweet laughter and nibbles of unleavened wry.

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