Georges Mazilu
By Fred Camper
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Mazilu, who had extensive art training in his native Romania before emigrating to Paris in 1982, is clearly influenced by the old masters; Sam Hunter’s excellent essay in a book on Mazilu (on sale in the gallery) cites “Bruegel, Bosch, Velazquez, and Goya, among others.” Hunter also discusses the half-human nature of Mazilu’s “hybrid figures” and connects the artist’s representations of “man’s solitary state…even in a crowd” with Camus and Sartre.
But the paintings’ real strength is the central tension between the figures’ human natures and the sense that they’re dissolving into pure paint or light. The usually darker, rather vacant backgrounds are painted in shades of brown; indeed, every color here seems undergirded by brown or tan. And though their bodies are often sharply outlined, they sometimes seem to disintegrate: in Le fou de carreau the clown’s brain seems to be leaking out in a smudge near the top of his head, and the edge of the woman’s right arm in Le jury is also smudged.
There’s something European about Mazilu’s mix of old master technique and philosophical themes, especially in contrast with the 13 watercolor-and-ink paintings and 10 drawings by Scott Harrison–formerly a Chicagoan and a tattoo artist–at Lyonswier Packer (a joint venture of Aaron Packer and Michael Lyons Wier at the old Lyons Wier space). The press release mentions such influences as “trading cards, retablo paintings, and Egyptian hieroglyphs”; classic Hollywood cartoons seem another inspiration for Harrison’s bright, bold forms: his appealingly goofy conceptions often suggest the fluid transformations of animators Max Fleischer, Tex Avery, and Chuck Jones.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Lara Goetsch.
