Curtain II

By spontaneously layering one image over anther, Poupee Boccaccio presents many different realities simultaneously. The illusion, magic, and duality apparent in her work stems from life-long experiences in the theater where an audience's entire reality is manipulated into another for the duration of a play. Boccaccio's characters are masked or costumed figures performing mysterious rituals on a sort of stage. The tension between reality and illusion intermingles with the duality of opposing forces in nature itself - good and evil or life and death. The ambiguity of their situation suggests that magic, ritual, theater, and religion are difficult to distinguish, each from the other - they are all landmarks people use to find their bearings in a chaotic universe. Much like life itself, the underlying question is whether each character will be overwhelmed by his/her landmarks, or be able to transcend them. (Works Long Beach)