A wrestler has made some funny paintings. His name is Lee Moriarty—the sporting press seems to agree he is a man of legitimate technical skill, though not yet as well-promoted as one engaged in his primary profession might hope. He is no technical slouch as a painter, either, producing cutesily surreal images of men in luchador masks exploring a tamely suburban world painted with mechanistic greeting-card precision.
Although clearly resembling one-liner merchants like French illustrator and former Atlantic Monthly mainstay Guy Billout, Moriarty’s images of muscle-bound homodomestication—a shirtless luchador in striped tights builds a snowman, another in cheetah print proudly wears his bird-watching goggles while standing on a branch, a wrestler in a business suit of pink fur and mask to match stands flanked by cherry blossoms—invite the viewer to write their own captions.
As humor is the main thing Moriarty seems to have going for him it’s odd that The Night Gallery seems anxious to downplay it. In addition to complimenting the images for “expanding traditional ideas of masculinity and identity” (of course) their press release also claims the work offers “an insider’s take on the tension between spectacle and self.” Sure. If you see what’s funny about Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s “47th-best grappler on the planet” painting a wrestler in a lightning-bolt patterned mask peddling a light blue bicycle with flowers in its front basket across a picture called Cruising in a show “curated by Adam Abdalla, founder of Orange Crush: The Journal of Art & Wrestling” then all of this will seem like just more deadpannery, and if you don’t, then God help you.
The funniest thing, though, about these paintings, is that they exist. That somewhere there’s a guy whose talents include both the back suplex and very fussy foliage in the pop post-modern stenciled style and the pictures require that meta-joke to justify their existence. The images themselves, like most funny things, have a limited shelf life, but this is Moriarty’s first solo gallery show, so he has the rest of his life to add layers to his kayfabe.
Image: Courtesy Night Gallery