The mystic is in full view here indeed here, at once deeply moving and life-affirming. Mixed Company (www.themixedcompany.com), 60 North Third Street, continues to offer pure gems of artists, with Julia and Maki Yamamoto being two of the brightest.

Paris born and Marseilles based, the whole of France finds its way into Julia's layered yet coy silkscreens filled with the charm of compositions that inhabit a territory where line and color are dependent on the basic level of the lives lived by the various and distinct woman she depicts. Some are clearcut, others fragmentary, as if they have become colors and lines that are to be reassembled, though with no pressing hurry to do so. The women she paints are ideal forms that occupy another plane of existence, and often these images hold forth in close proximity to one another, yet are ever separate, as if worlds passing by through some void just outside our perception, but close enough for us to sense all too soon now.

Tokyo born and Manhattan based, Maki Yamamoto offers up fabric work that is unlike anything to be found in the area, which is always a big on such art. Possessed of both a gossamer organic quality and a tight tensile resilience, this work is all billowing wisps of cloth that holds dear and sheer, almost a scrim of the soul, a caul of Maki's making.

She imbues her offerings with an informal concern for just what is needed. Indeed, there is spare quality to her work that lends it a rarefied ambience, which is both painterly and sculptural. Her palette is subtle, too, sometimes veering to various shades of only a single slice of the spectrum, each one growing fast. This pair brings true international flair to Old City.


PRESS/REVIEW - December 3 • 2003 - R.B. Strauss