The clown has never been as innocent as we pretend. In Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci,” the Italian opera’s performance ends in murder and the audience becomes witness to something irretrievable. “La commedia é finita,” the comedy is finished, proclaimed by Pierrot the clown as a refusal to perform any longer. It is from this moment that Michael Costello takes the title of his current body of work, on view at HallSpace through March 28, situating a series of illustrated Pierrots unguarded and undone, caught between archetype and identity, embodying the uneasy strain of maintaining persona.
The series examines what lies beneath the mask of clowns, jesters and fools in relation to how we all present ourselves in society. In an earlier series of work, nudity functioned as a vehicle for psychological exposure as Costello sought to demystify the body and find beauty within perceived imperfection. “La Commedia é Finite” is not a stylistic detour, but a continuation of that exploration. Both bodies of work interrogate the tension between exterior and interior, between how we are seen and who we are beneath the gaze of others. “We are all fools and we all wear masks,” Costello wrote. Here he is not simply stripping skin but probing the persona itself.
“The work is personal,” Costello explained. The drawings are done from life and shaped by the anxieties his models share with him. Even beneath stage makeup, the figures are rooted in lived exchange. “They are drawn with great affection,” he says, describing a bond formed through trust.