Revealing and Concealing   a view of an exhibition of art by MAX PODSTOLSKI at the Salamander Gallery by James Murray.   Contra(dictionary)...Co(operation)... Surface = the face is the front for ascension, an archaeology of the soul, skin off pool, crust off earth. The show. Intimeacy = this instance, isolated slice, this dig has personal solace. It is deep. The artist's show. The show has as its soul and subject the balancing act of coexisting conflictions of insides and outsides, of knowing and not knowing, of yes and no, of coming and going, of self and other. Of the Deliberate Primitive asking is the self a trick of consciousness. Yin and Yang, Nomus and Phusis; time and nothing, male and female, old and young, human and animal, order and chaos, fear and love, light and dark, personality and depersonality, Alter (and) Ego. Awareness of the 'opposing paradigm' creates a destruction of the mundane of the other side, it sheds light. Premeditated occultdom and automatism. Controlling lines and free forms. Is the world shrieking, all art is believing in deception. We simultaneously reveal and conceal feelings and thoughts; the subconscious and the conscious. Identity is a necessary fiction in public and private life. Octavio Paz says "we cannot escape from masks or names. We are inseparable from our fictions - our features."   Flight to the Interior (asend and desend)                                                             Events are random                                                                                                          slices of passing                                                                                       legitimacy (in(time)ate)                                                                      olfactory noises,                                                    pitched fights and rear doors.                                  I enter into this                by interrupting luck at the end of thinking... "... in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (Melee, final vociferations.) tennis...so calm...Cunard...unfinished." (Samuel Becket's Lucky, 'Waiting For Godot') Theatre Absurd...Lucky knows the tennis ball jerks back and forward, in and out. Fruitful frustration. The tennis ball is a Yin Yang if you hold it up at the right light position. A cross section of the human body, releasing and congealing and sometimes freezing on your appearance with the heat of the extemal world. Revealing and concealing. The paintings are seens in a tragicomedy. In(structions)...Stage directions...the Seens... Our in structions are to finish the work of art for ourselves, our own interiors. The Anima that drives, the journey to individual subconsciousness. This leads to surfacings... surface...masks not to hide behind but shields to protect...what is very precious? and simultaneously reveal the usually hidden self to gratify the need for human empathy. Bodies are masks, surfaces hint at the  pool within and hoses connect us. The arena of life, the stage spectacle, the Tragicomedy...the pink shadow bust at the bottom right of the screen is someone you might like to enter... and follow. His head is a question mark made out of hose. Their hearts brim in the absurdity of questions that cannot and will not be quenched with knowledge. Wisdom isn't knowledge. Their weapons are left there for a god in the faces, their masks which do not deceive but show. They morph together as two sides of the same coin, order and chaos - the coexisting confliction is one in creativity. Pessimism is purged as Apollo and Dionysus fight it out. Hose head circulates the blood to the pool birds swim in. Glove? hand palms off the disbelievers...down the ladder into another chance rebirth (Hades).   As in Greek theatre masks do not hide they indicate. We choose how much of us we reveal or conceal to others. Life is a tragicomedy, absurd but necessarily absurd. We leer and grimace between opposite states. Life is the affirmation of mess. Life is a theatre of the absurd. The transrational meter, coexisting conflictions... safety can be no knowledge, In the No, hard road...stupid? There is no certainty in what is revealed, this is called weightlessness, flying away beautiful like a bird. "I regard my art as expressive of the human condition, not escapist in the negative sense." (Max Podstolski). Max's totem is the bird. The Talisman motif, birdlike, was taken from a piece of broken pipe transformed by the ocean elements, concealed and spat out on a beach from its joumey. Special. Birdwoman is a bird hermaphrodite, a complete balance of the female, male and bird. The unity is celebratory, synthesised love, flight paths swoop over this totem with energy. Anima signifies the will to free the bird within us. To journey ceaselessly. In Identity (People are Birds) the central black and white figure is a face mask and a beak, a bird shield. This motif pervades throughout the mask compositions. The beak bird mask is a shield of personal religion, a crusader shield, a cross with sanctity, a secular crucifixion. This Insider depicts a mask, a persona, (the personal mask that distinguishes one person from another which is shown in the work Persona where one persona is highlighted out of a network of yin yang entities). At the centre this wondrous mask is surrounded by other masks with the bird totem emanating mystically from the top, a self cult God. Creative death is a skull like mask at the bottom with other empty fearful masks just above. To change time what is that? What is it when you take time and decide to free it, translucid it, kick some bit of nothing (under surface) backwards or forwards into some face (surface). The face that hears is here. The skull is a fruit bowl, a biological and spiritual mask. An interface expressive of desires and moods. "The senses are our bridge between the incomprehensible and the comprehensible." (Auguste Macke, 'Masks' 1912) The head is the locus of the senses, it has every sense and more in one body area. Masks are visual bridges, osmotic detonators between conflictions, faces laid bare and covered. Scrutiniser, dramascapes, ploughed fields and water waves, the square, the spire, the pointed cage. The CoBrA snake coiled and ready. The artist snake charmer. The judge gets up your nose...watching, waiting, tries to pin you from the the outside. We are desirous, mesmerised and all for the sun and the moon we fly, opened and closed however. Lines become bars of a personal jail, defence to hide behind and choose which parts need Revealing and Concealing. Menagerie of the Child, uncertain town, fear of the beast. Child, the free puppet with a light bulbous foot to find its way down to the dark. The Art Scene is full of thieves, accusers, initiated and burdened with knowledge, they are in the know. Reptiles eat birds. Social ladder, pecking orders, alien nation. Purge your own spite. What doctrine has concealed self truth? It is a Little World. The universe and everyone is biology... Ancestors, our common strength is our spirit in mortality...veins go only through our body, and hoses come out of our nebuli. The Network exists where communication is movement, yellow muscle sinews binding all. I Advance Masked, from masking tape to masking face. Believe in deception and free yourself in the game of true lies, snake charmer. Buttons fastened. Bright eyes. Big shoes.   BACK