On the Work

The prints of Sy Hakim have three major subjects: places of reverence, expressions of individual searching and urban life. The style of the multi-colored woodblock prints (and relief sculpture blocks) can best be characterized as "symbolic-expressionism": the explorations of the ideal values of art religion and culture and current concerns with society’s technological orientation, consumerism and a growing isolation of the individual. There is an emphasis on strong expressive line, composition and the direct expressionistic use of contrast /or color. The image formed and the symbols used are integral to the idea, the concept of creation, and the ambiguities of life.

The ethical and metaphysical concerns are reflected not only in a, perhaps, preselected idea or emotion but are adjusted to the "working" – the doing itself. The type of wood, the grain and the knots and the hardness or softness are not merely obstacles to be overcome, but "naturals" which must be adjusted to, integrated into and with the theme itself. It is not merely a rising or falling grain, it is not the finding of the "spirit" within the wood which must be liberated, but it is the recognition that – as with all living or creating – accommodations must be made, adjustments to the "what is" or what happens, what one encounters. One aims for control but recognizes the possible variations and attempts to include them, to use the multiplicity of factors: the depth of the cut, the pressure of the inking, the pressing of the rubbing, the multiplicity of the variations as prints are pulled. The final works are a result of the variations, the attempted controls and the possibilities of the theme. The work is an expression of multiple explorations and adjustments, a continuity of choices and decisions. Art is the result of the premeditated attempt and the utilization of chance and the accidental, of thematic-metaphysical and physical-technical adjustments: the resolutions evolve and develop into the work itself. The artistic production, the work – a selection of hand cut blocks, hand printed images and the poetry – hopefully reveals in the variations of themes, a life reverence and an imminent sacred quality.

Sy Hakim