As Masi has reduced the elements of anger, aggression, conflict, fear in his work, without any diminution of the projection of these emotions in symbolic images, so his work has become more distant, more elegant, more intense – more distilled! From performance and body art he progressed to unoccupied, domestic interiors, where the arrangement of forms, careful gradations of colour, calculated light effects, all contributed to a sense of ambiguity and expectation – not, I repeat, very different from the manipulation of audience response by a master film director. Masi, clearly, has always sought that control.
This was the experience I recalled from his last exhibition in 1976; what I saw in his studio three years later, whilst in afterthought a logical development, first proved a shock.
Unsuspectingly I mounted the old wooden stairs to arrive at a huge photographic studio; there I was asked to wait for his own studio to be suitably arranged. Eventually I was called in to be confronted with the construction now entitled SEARCH (Rattus-investigatus). My first impression was of a group of huge, horrifying rats; I could barely stifle a gasp of horror and the desire to depart. But within a split second I became not only convinced that the vision was not reality, but that its presentation was so poetic that any sense of reality disappeared.
The construction was made of six hooded rats, stuffed and arranged on an angled platform with two rat cages; behind a small cabinet holds various objects, seemingly related to scientific dissection, which not only introduce a human element, posing questions and problems, but in their cold precision add a different element of disturbance. A powerful spotlight mercilessly illuminates the tableaux, whilst there are added ‘theatrical devices’ - ‘tape loop of rat sound ultrasonic and audible, i.e. 1-Fear call, 2-Attacking call, 3-Submission call, 4-Mating call’ (as described in the catalogue) as well as ‘atmosphere in immediate area of constructions invested with a heavy musty odour and ether vapour’.
As will be recognised, we are almost in the area of the horror-movie, but as arranged at the Institute, in an antiseptic cubicle, the construction proved far less disturbing than in the studio. The meticulous arrangement of the elements, the cold lighting, the projection of the total environment as an image, almost as in a photograph, immediately defused superficial response.
In his catalogue, Masi quotes from the French poet Paul Valery –‘ Sight, touch, smell, hearing, movement, leads us, then, from time to time, to dwell on sensation to act in such a way as to increase the intensity or duration of the impression they make…’ This perfectly describes the artist’s intention.
Another work at the ICA involved a single stuffed rat – GYMNASIUM (Rattus) enigmatically posed with a set of parallel bars and a medicine ball, with a pile of crushed glass in a cage-like structure made of ceramic bricks.
The other two constructions involve stuffed Alsatian dogs: MEETING (Canis Lupus familiaris-obscurus), like the first rat environment, is a complex arrangement showing the dog standing behind a table and chair, with a white screen at the back, and in addition to a tape recording of dog sounds, of threat, anxiety, suspicion, and the atmosphere of odour, the artist has added two slide projections, each of 80 slides, which apart from functional purpose, act as a further vehicle for Brechtian alienation.
The second piece, YARD (Canes Lupi) includes, as the title indicates, two animals, and unlike the first dog, these are without muzzles, one of them snarling, revealing huge, manacing teeth. The two dogs are shown in a large wooden cage, with barbed wire, along with a tape of slow growling.
In her introduction to the catalogue at the ICA, Sarah Kent writes, ‘The subjects of Masi’s set pieces are not human…..’ The material may be animal, but the subject surely is entirely human. The artist is not merely making an environment describing animal behaviour in extreme situations; they are symbols, and the subject, so to speak, is both the artist who has made them, and us the viewer in reaction to them. The human situation, of course, is the subject, as of all art. The artist himself puts it well: ‘ I do not realise my mental image, I simply construct a material analogy of such a kind that possibly the perceiver can grasp the image, provided he looks at an analogue… There is no story, or presentation of cause-and-effect… These constructions maintain an essential function which lies in their possible influence on your attitude towards reality.’
Charles Spencer
1979
