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IMPECCABLE, ELUSIVE EXHIBIT CONFRONTS VIEWER Lucy Maki calls her new body of work "photo-collage paintings." This label, while not exactly a misnomer, is as ambiguous as her latest show, titled "The Elusive Self." In the artist's smoke and sepia-toned images, form and content are wedded in an alchemical marriage that, at very least, adds to our knowledge of the mysterious "department of the interior" that governs all facets of our existence.But trying to categorize the structure of this remarkable work is as difficult as pinning down the slippery and constantly shifting nature of the self.

Lucy Maki, From the Garden of Earthly Delights, 70" x 75.5", mixed media, xerox collage on canvas, 1994

Maki has repeatedly photographed her own silhouette against a neutral ground and collaged this image, or fragments of it, to canvas. Her "paintings," however, are more like wall reliefs. She incorporates sections of wood as odd-shaped frames and side panels and she breaks any strict adherence to traditional framing techniques. And sometimes Maki includes small objects that function as purely sculptural details. This work is a richly inventive aggregation of methods and materials that provokes the viewer into exploring an array of ways to imagine and visualize something within us. Trying to identify and investigate our "elusive self" is of course not a new preoccupation either for artists, psychologists, theologians or poets. Yet what keeps this terrain so seductive is that everyone will arrive at a different possibility for visualizing what can never really be visualized. It's evident in Maki's constructions that she has freely roamed through various arcane, spiritual traditions as well as poetry and art history to borrow symbols, text and certain details to enhance her own investigation. All of this borrowing has been run through the filter of Maki's own subjectivity and become highly personalized information wedded effectively to her own silhouette -- literally and figuratively. One example of her appropriation is the work "From the Garden of Earthly Delights" (mixed media on canvas and wood, 1994). Maki here is referring to Hieronymus Bosch's painting (ca. 1500) that has been much quoted through time because of its fabulous and fantastic imagery. Maki has not taken a specific image per se from Bosch but has drawn upon Bosch's free associations -- his penchant for the hybrid archetype-- part human, part vegetable, part poetic invention. Maki, too, sees the self in this endlessly recombinant fashion without displaying slavish devotion to a particular person, tradition, historical style or philosophical thought. Maki's constructions travel in many directions at once, but her images are not undermined by a confusion of allusions. The artist's decision-making in each painting is impeccable, which results in a cohesive, purposeful and highly evocative body of work brings the viewer a step closer to the gates of him or herself. This is substantive work, however elusive the fleeting shadows toward which Maki aims her body, her brush, her camera and her mind. Maki's current exhibition can be seen at Linda Durham Gallery at 400 Canyon Road to Aug. 16. DIANE ARMITAGE Diane Armitage, "Impeccable, Elusive Exhibit Confronts Viewer," Albuquerque Journal, July 28, 1994

Copyright©2001. Lucy Maki. All rights reserved.