| Maura Vazakas, Contemporary Artist |
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Reviews San Diego Union Tribune, April 10, 2003, "Double Vision", by Robert Pincus People are silhouettes in Maura Vazakas' new paintings. Many consist of heads alone, floating in pictorial space. The artist's small color photographs convey a fragmentary tale of a trip up the West Coast, taken by a little blond doll named Matty. Her new paintings maintain the mix of pictographic image and droll wit that is a welcome hallmark of her art. As in years past, the viewer should look at the sides of her paintings as well as the front. There you will find thin slices of Archie comics, pictorial reminders of her roots in Pop Art. Vazakas draws on Americana, loosely, as a stylistic source, while turning quaintness on its ear. While deadpan humor pervades several paintings, Vazakas' Matty pictures are unabashedly comic. They occupy a mock narrative, not unlike Eleanor Antin's 100 boots did in a famous series of the early 1970's that took the footwear from coast to coast. Matty, like the boots, is the still performer in her own pictures-nestling mong flowers in Seattle, or posing by a road sign that reads Mount Shasta. Atlanta Journal Constitution, Aug. 3, 2001, "Clever images, deeper meanings" by Jerry Cullum "San Diego artist Maura Vazakas paints with the carefree sweep of a grade-school doodler. But the result is serious art enveloped in a wit that stays with you. It's all quite bright, both in the sense of cleverness and in the delectably clashing color choices."
San Diego Union Tribune, June 4, 2001, "Good Morning/Ongoing-Art" by Robert Pincus "In recent years, San Diego artist Maura Vazakas did something rather unusual with her paintings. Each contained the sort of pictographic puzzle called a rebus. Don't look for the same in her current show. Her style still possesses its distinct strain of unpolished charm and emphasis on iconic images. But there's writing in these pictures, along with bittersweet autobiography."
San Diego Union Tribune, March 8, 2001, "Oceanside's OMA Regional 2" by Robert Pincus "Maura Vazakas lets us know that each of her Pop-inflected paintings is also a puzzle to be decoded. Pictures hint at a hidden literary message; there's a rebus embedded in each, along with frames from "Archie" comics, with emphasis on Betty and Veronica. Here, mystery is by design."
The Desert Sun, September 26, 1999, "Painter brings principles of pop art into the 1990s" by Jean McKig "Vazakas likes her canvases to have a high-style pop design wtih a visual toughness, and she uses an unusual color palette. Beyond the pure painterly possibilities that Vazakas addresses deftly, there is the question of meaning. The answer remains in the mind of the viewer to interpret or ignore. Galleria Dos Damas again lives up to its reputation for bringing some of the most stimulating shows to the desert. Like them or not, they are educational and thought-provoking."
San Diego Union Tribune, March 18, 1999, "Floating images-Emblems and relics are the backdrops for two exhibitions" by Robert Pincus "Emblems were an immensely popular type of picture three and four centuries ago. They carried messages for daily living, often explained in accompanying words. This historical genre comes to mind, strongly, while viewing Maura Vazakas' paintings at the Debra Owen Gallery. Not because she paints dolphins, rainbows or ermines, but because the repeat appearances of particular objects in her art lend them symbolic import. These images include cups, eyes and light bulbs. Letters become images, too, since they float free of any linked identity as words. She renders them with an admirable stylistic energy and a clear enthusiasm for color. Vazakas lavishes as much attention on backgrounds as the object and letters that float in front of them. The mood of her paintings isn't predominantly light or dark. They evoke seasons, weather, emotions in a restrained, cool fashion. Thus it rings true when she cites Pop as an influence." Double Vision People are silhouettes in Maura Vazakas' new paintings. Many consist of heads alone, floating in pictorial space. The artist's small color photographs convey a fragmentary tale of a trip up the West Coast, taken by a little blond doll named Matty. Vazakas, who lives in University City, alternates the two bodies of work in this, her first local solo exhibition in three years. Her earlier paintings took the form of rebuses – those frequently trying puzzles in which sequences of images, when sounded out, form phrases and sentences. The new paintings forgo that device, but they maintain the mix of pictographic image and droll wit that is a welcome hallmark of her art. As in years past, a viewer should look at the sides of her paintings as well as the front. There you will find thin slices of Archie comics, pictorial reminders of her roots in Pop Art. Archie, Veronica and pals have seemed to fit, for some time, as a thematic foil to Vazakas' work. They are blatant emblems of an antiseptic version of American suburbia. It's the same sort of sweet '50s world that a pair of teens enter through the television in the 1998 film "Pleasantville" – before events in the movie turn dystopian. Vazakas, a baby boomer, lays a melancholy veneer over this suburban world, without reaching for the sort of labored moral messages that mar "Pleasantville." She isn't interested in moralizing so much as creating a bittersweet mood. Vazakas draws on Americana, loosely, as a stylistic source, while turning quaintness on its ear. The haunting "Horticulture Lesson" isn't quite a nightmare landscape, but it is captivatingly creepy. Trees sprout heads. There are picket fences, but they're gray and black, not white. By the time you get around to reading the banner-like text in the middle of the scene – "Welcome to Our Community Please Pull Up a Chair" – it's unlikely you'd want to comply. Even in a painting with a cheery palette, "My Mom's House Is Just Around the Corner," there's a disquieting hum. The house is just too small, as if it were a terrarium and the mom holding a plate with slice of pie were on display. Children's faces float against a yellow landscape and there's the faint outline of pie in the cloud above. The scene feels as if it springs from memory of her own childhood. Yet that remembrance could be coupled with a remembrance of Vazakas' own experience as a mother. The ghostly pie in the sky suggests an ambivalent memorial to her past, its spatial distortions a touch disturbing but the mood is tender. While deadpan humor pervades several paintings, Vazakas' Matty pictures are unabashedly comic. They occupy a mock narrative, not unlike Eleanor Antin's 100 boots did in a famous series of early 1970s postcards that took the footwear (a surrogate crowd) from coast to coast. (Another notable precedent is Laurie Simmons' doll-populated photographs of the 1980s.) Matty, like the boots, is the still performer in her own pictures – nestling among flowers in Seattle, or posing by a road sign that reads Mount Shasta. At an earlier stage in her trek, she's at the legendary corner of Haight and Ashbury. Matty's face is fuzzy but the words are in focus: "Well I'm here! Where have all the hippies gone?" You don't get the feeling that Matty really wants an answer, just a little attention from us. In her last frame, she complains of being alone, again, in her studio, faced with the mission to make paintings. Matty as mock doppelgnger for her creator? Seems plausible. Robert L. Pincus: (619) 293-1831; robert.pincus@uniontrib.com |
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