She's got a deft touch, what else can be said? Velvet hammer an apt description. Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie lives and works in Belgium. She's fine-tuned to a variety of modern-day lexicons and historical frames of reference, but displays a great deal of patience in distilling those languages into her finished work. Anyone that made multiples ostensibly about Brian Eno would elicit groans and a kick in the teeth; McKenzie instead inspires a serious contemplation of how to kill your idols. Could it be because there's an underlying connectivity to these representations of ideas, movements, and aesthetics? Yes, it could be. It could be desire, not codified, but elevated, and delighted in, entranced and tortured by. It's an ineffable rigor and an unyielding intellectualism.

*****

The Inventors of Tradition by Beca Lipscombe and Lucy McKenzie. Eds. Catriona Duffy, Lucy McEachan. A study of Scotland's textile industry and its implications on art, geo-politics, manufacturing, and design. McKenzie and Lipscombe (Atelier) with Panel collaborate to produce an intriguing visual narrative, one that elides more than dry corporate histories, but further identifies the lasting relationships between artisans, companies, and presentation. Features Bonnie Cashin, Caerlee Mills, Begg Scotland, Hawick Cashmere, Laura Lees, Jannette Murray, Mackintosh, Muehlbauer, Steven Purvis. 144 pages, 9.75" x 12". $55.

See also: Pelican Avenue AW12 for designs related to the exhibition Te Kust En Te Keur at Mu.Zee (Ostend, Belgium).