"These animals can reveal the secrets of the future because they are thought to be receptacles for the souls of the dead. Learning their longuage, imitating their voice, is equivolent to ability to communicate with the beyond, the future. Birds are psychopomps..."

The sketchbook nature of HIDDEN SIGN belies its importance in Masi's career as an indication that in his masked role the artist can become a, shaman, the shape-changer or flying man of primitive cultures,capable of transforming the dichotomies on which his work is based, freeing the timeless dimension which the pieces occupy ond shifting their context into a magical world beyond life or death.

The second indication of a change of context is in the drawings and etchings, plans for sculptures as yet unmade. From drawn meditations on a single roof structure, the most elementary unit of shelter, Masi passes a larger, more strongly emotive elaborations of o covered, unwalled site. Sometimes it is boxed, at other times fenced and moated, guarded and surrounded with stakes. In the most assertive of the wall drawings it has become a raised ark, like a sacred tomb with the roof as canopy over the relic it contains - the imprint of an animal's body. An expressionist fervour creeping into these works suggests that the treatment Masi is reaching for has moved beyond the static definitions the older pieces assumed and that the relationship he is celebrating is o bond of love connecting him with lesser creatures.

In one of Kafka's letters to Max Brod he marvels at "the assurance with which people are able to bear life". Starting with nothing but nameless panic Masi has perfected his own Kafkoesque art, using theatre to transcend theatre. Gradually his means of subversion are changing. He steps forward pointing at his mask while below it his face remains contorted, screaming as before.