Metaphors and Questions

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Gregori Maiofis would turn to his own children and family as a centerpiece for his work. Mixed Realities brings into the world the same complex juxtaposition of innocence and wonderment, fantasy and reality that playfully and profoundly mark his earlier work with unlikely animals and odd objects — scenarios include monkeys, elephants, lions, and recently his famous series with the bear and the ballerina. In these new images, human beings are center stage: They occupy real space with their distinct physical presence but they are faceless; their identities are hidden by the diving masks they are wearing. What are they seeing that we can’t see? Like the animals in his earlier works, these people are playing theatrical roles, reminding us of the many cultural and political spaces in which we are always moving.

Sometimes these roles seem to speak to personal fantasies and the fairy tales of other times and places; they also bring to the foreground ghostly references to the political and cultural realities that surround us now. They are simultaneously sharp and ambiguous: They ask us, as viewers, to confront our own perceptions of ourselves and the world(s) we inhabit. Maiofis creates a new multi-layered mythology mixed with wonder, humor and disturbing allusions. His work is suffused with a marvelous complexity of content and craft. His layering of different papers, the cutting of his images, his use of old even archaic chemical compounds enrich the elusive character of the meaning of his images. His use of captions, with their mixture of popular language and altered meanings, bring yet another dimension to this mix. We find ourselves faced with metaphors of wit that question what we see and think we know.