About Yoella Razili's Art

"Paramount to the works of Yoella Razili and Matthew Thomas, recently profiled in tandem solo exhibitions at the LA Artcore, is an awareness of painting's two faces. While underscoring the immutable presence of the physical world, their works propose a transcendence of material realms. Constructing traditional concepts of painting, these works grant a canvas' physical face as much significance as its metaphor countenance. Emphasizing the creative process, the tableaux ultimately evoke dialogues that reflect upon the human condition as framed by material and immaterial realities.

Razili's monochromatic paintings are densely textured objects. As much sculpture as painting, they project a brute physical presence comparable to walls, doors, and books. Resembling such obdurate forms, they create provocative tensions between the work's frontal surface plane and its deep edges that project from the wall usually by one to three inches. While accentuating that frontal plane, however, the exhibited thwart habituated expectations of locating an image in that accustomed space. Spinning tradition around, they make the material substance of paint their subject matter, rather than creating visual images that dis tract and dissolve awareness of a painting's physical substance. Adding and subtracting paint in a sculptural manner, Razili" surfaces appear worn, scraped and distressed in work such as On, Under, and Beyond (1999), while appearing refined, smooth, and serene in the Rusted Lines series. The incessant question posed by these works is whether such sheer physicality of form and substance conveys anything beyond its material being.

Such concepts could be argued to mediate the work as a whole, for the choosing to accentuate the physical realm, these works function as subliminal metaphors of the female self. Conventionally associated with the realm of the physical, women have historically been affiliated with corporal rather than conceptual works, while remaining often to this day socially appraised and valued for their physical appearance. Perhaps, it is such basic social actualities that lend Razili's immutable objects so much conviction and complexity. As reflections of the self they manifest the female and human struggle to establish presence beyond physical appearance and existance, while underscoring corporal reality."

"...Challenging viewers to pass beyond surface appearances, Thomas' works function in more traditional ways than Razili's while emerging from related points of inquiry. Both artists critique contemporary culture's preocupation with external appearances as indicators of internal substance. Underscoring the complex relation between material and immaterial works, their works accentuate the significance of nuance, innuendo and allusion in the cons truction of perception, interperception, and meaning."