As summer's memories recede, we face autumn with rejuvenated interest. Travels so often prompt us to alter our views on daily life induce us to attend to the previously overlooked. For most of us, the vacation ex-perience weaves its way very subtly into our daily habits.

For artist, ALEXIS TERZIEFF, the transformation extends beyond the average
imagination.

A summer trip to San Francisco in 1985, an afternoon lunch, a bill to pay... ostensibly ordinary tourist activities. But, as TERZIEFF was counting his money on the restaurant's white table cloth, he-noticed a 500 franc bill nestled among the green dollar bills. The crumpled bill fluttered from beneath its hiding place and inadvertantly caught his attention. For him, this well-used legal tender emerged as a butterfly, more plausible than nature itself. In an instant TERZIEFF transformed the zeros by sketching wings around the symmetrical black rings to complete his vision.

From that day forth, paper money inspired him to reveal hidden meanings surreptitiously lurking beneath the apparent facade. The idea of inventing new values, adding a few. zeros here and there to produce a veritable millionaire, superimposing old bills onto new all posed tempting possibilities. And thus began the conception of this fine collection of drawings included in the exhibition "Money".

Previously known for his landscape painting, TERZIEFF evidences, a clever shift in media and content in this group of drawings. Using prisma color, each highly complex drawing, 60 cm. x 100 cm, requires one month of six hours per day minimum to "duplicate" the intricacies of design. Using a loop, Terzieff skillfully recreates the subtle folds and creases, filigreed borders, color, light, and shadows. Having faithfully reproduced minute details, he then interjects his unique brand of wit, thus dispelling any
possible fears of mere counterfeiting...

In works such as, "Le vieu rêve..." a one hundred dollar bill sports the personage of Eugene Delacroix in place of Franklin Roosevelt. In honor of the French Revolution Bicentennial, "Banque du Sang..." depicts the head of Robespierre instead of Delacroix. TERZIEFF'S imagination expands. beyond simple modification in "Banque de St. Denis..." As a skimpily clad woman reclines in the middle of "rue St. Denis," TERZIEFF humorously suggests a use for this invented 500 francs bill.

A final hint that this exhibition can appeal to others than the wealthy, the Artist concocts "Le repas de 1'artiste." Here a fish is served to us between a knife and fork flanked by 20 francs, the weakest trench franc bill. But then again, if wealth were left up to ALEXIS TERZIEFF'S deft hand, it would only be a matter of zeros.


Barbara Mutti, Associate
HARLEEN & ALLEN FINE ART
San. Francisco, California