The manipulation of texts in Masi's recent photographic works relates to its wider context - in this case to developments in computer technology and to sophisticated typographic devices that have become standard practice in advertising - in a similar way. Much as the wall works had summoned forth associations with the barriers and fortress-like modern architecture behind which plans are hatched and secrets are stored away, so these text-based works rely on the particularity of phrases familiar from the media as triggers to meaning. Their exploitation of written language might make them appear to be more closely allied to developments in conceptual art than was previously the case, but such a conceptual thrust underlies all of Masi's work, given that even in the object-based installations each element is brought into play as part of an elaborate equation to be decoded by the viewer. Conversely, these new works remain very much in the realm of object, with the words presented as if existing on several different layers: on top of the glass surface, engraved in it or printed in such a way that they seem to lie behind it. In a number of these photographs there is an assertive rectilinear grid suggestive of the kind of reinforced glass used in banks and other buildings for additional security, as another kind of barrier between those in control and visitors regarded with mistrust as trespassers motivated by suspect intentions.

While various contemporary conflicts are called to mind by Masi's subject matter, from the sectarian terrorism in Northern Ireland to the wars fragmenting the former Yugoslavia, the artist is careful not to limit the works to any single situation or interpretation. Choosing photographic images that could have been culled from almost any part of the world, selecting words and phrases that could be applied with equal conviction to any number of encounters as reported in the press, making use of widely available materials and reconstituting the components of a minimalist modern architecture that has achieved a fully international currency, Masi directs our attention to the mechanics of recurring situations rather than to the specifics of any one conflict or to the misapplication of power by any particular government. By steering equally clear of objective reportage and of any strongly partisan position, he asks us to question our own acceptance of authority, our own prejudices and preconditioning, by which we allow our response to be manipulated.

Masi's work has never sat comfortably within any particular tendencies in contemporary art, since it has always obeyed its own particular agenda, and it is thus not usefully subject to methods of analysis devised for art to which it might bear a superficial resemblance. While there is a strong element of conceptualism, this has always been subservient to the overwhelming physical presence of the objects and to their theatrical impact. Masi's preferred form during the 1980s, -that of the sculptural installation, was manipulated for emotive and psychological reasons rather than as an end in itself. Even in his most formally constructed recent works, the wall reliefs, the appropriation of the language of Minimal Art serves purposes that are totally at variance with those of the originators of the movement, since the forms have been invested by him with negative social and political connotations.

Yet the changed significance accorded to an existing pictorial language has little in common with the arch stylistic conceits that characterise the tendencies that we have come to describe as Post modernist: Masi is involved not with a game of aesthetics, nor with a reshuffling of art history, but with a more analytical exploration of the extra-artistic meanings attached to forms and images.

Years ago, when I first visited Munich, I was struck by the fact that the same sense of order that gave such beauty to the city's plan and many of its buildings could be witnessed - in a corrupted, unimaginably evil form - in the deadly efficiency of the concentration camp erected in nearby Dachau. The chilling beauty and structural perfection of Masi's art give similar pause for thought. Just as we catch ourselves drawing aesthetic pleasure from the harmonious design and exquisite engineering of the objects he has devised, we are forced to take account of their negative connotations as instruments of divisiveness, control and autocratic power. It is at such moments of awareness, when we question evidence all too often taken for granted, that we become conscious of the possibility of taking some of that power back into our own hands.

Masi's art, by its very nature, will never be championed-wholeheartedly by the Establishment, whose privileged position, after all, it seeks to challenge. Yet his is a distinctive voice in the wilderness, a voice surprisingly untainted by cant and aloof from party politics, that we ignore at our peril. For two decades he has drawn our attention, gently but persuasively, to a brave new world filled with tempting possibilities but also with a potential for disaster, corruption and selfimprisonment. Thankfully, he is far more than a merchant of gloom. By encouraging us to remain alert to the encroachments on our civil liberties, and to resist the barriers that seek to divide us from each other, he offers potential for thinking about our future.

Marco Livingstone