Widely exhibited in both Mexico and the United States, Mauricio Toulumsis has given himself  a unique artistic project: to explore his belief in eternal life in the medium of painting. The female, seen as “the central figure in the process of life, as the stewardess of birth and creation,”  is the primary protagonist of Toulumsis' paintings, featured in “Masters of the Imagination: The Latin American Fine Art Exhibition,” at Agora Gallery, Chelsea, 530 West 25th Street, in Chelsea, from October 21 to November 10. (Reception: Thursday, October 26, from 6 to 8 PM.)
   Working in acrylic on canvas, Toulumsis depicts his female figures in a fantastic realist style comparable to the imaginatively distorted surrealism of Victor Brauner. Peculiar to Toulumsis' figures, however, are distinctive forms that project from their heads like tree-branches, antlers or antennae. These seem to be attributes of the spirit-world that  Toulumsis' figures appear to inhabit and project a sense of supernatural energies that evade rational understanding. One can only imagine that Toulumsis has arrived at some intuitive understanding of how these spirit beings would appear, which he makes surprisingly convincing by virtue of his artistic skill and conviction.
    Other anatomical anomalies in Toulumsis' paintings are figures that morph below the shoulders into forms that resemble the roots of trees, as seen in “Woman Eclipsed,” or that  culminate in Baroque arabesques like the figures in  “Flesh, Soul & Spirit.” Despite their unusual attributes, however, we experience these female personages as palpable presences in Toulumsis' paintings, ­­as specific  portraits of imaginary beings rather than generalized depictions of anthropomorphic symbols or archetypes.
   In the painting called “Soul and Spirit Creations,” for example, we encounter three such feminine beings in one of the artist's most chromatically vibrant canvases, while in “Later, We Will Follow You,” four figures are clustered together harmoniously, the central one having the aforementioned root-like configurations visible below the shoulders. In these, as in other paintings by Toulumsis, there is a strong sense of spiritual inquiry, in keeping with the note in the artist's biography that he has been involved for over three decades in a process of self exploration, as well as a “philosophical search for meaning in life, meaning in death, and truths about the corporeal and spiritual human.”   
  One of the most complex of Mauricio Toulumsis' recent acrylics on canvas is the large composition entitled “The Revelation of Women's Feelings.” In this work, which resembles a kind of secular contemporary cousin of the Romanesque icon, the figures of several mysterious woman, submerged below the shoulders in a ring of clouds from which three upraised hands also protrude as though to hail them, are interspersed with seven representations of the cross. While one would not attempt to analyze this painting's specific meaning, it projects a powerful sense of something esoteric, just beyond understanding.
   Indeed, one could spend many hours studying the paintings of Mauricio Toulumsis, digesting their symbols, and attempting to decipher their esoteric meanings. However, it seems sufficient to take them at face value, as mysterious and ultimately unknowable manifestations of one man's search for truth transformed into objects of considerable aesthetic appeal.

-- Peter Wiley