Artist in Person Within many religious beliefs, profound dedication to sacred rites ensures the renewal of the spirit and through it the material world as well. Break the continuity of enacted ritual and the heart of the universe withers. In his first videotape, Michael Tracy, an iconographic painter who lives along the Rio Grande, has constructed a "mythic journey to the city of the hummingbirds." Visually exquisite, this work imagines a latter-day Aztecan ritual of purification and sacrifice. Shot in a majestic ruin nestled in the mountains above Guanajuato, Mexico, Flower Warrior follows the transformation of the Priest of the Flowers (played by Tracy's collaborator Yupanqui Aguilar) as he is first ritualistically cleansed and then confronts a host of warrior hummingbirds, subalterns from a primitive order. Tracy's proto-mythic drama takes the form of a sensually rendered procession of mystical encounters, filled with homoerotic "wild boys," ornate altars, exotic costuming and neo-indigenous music. Elemental and stunning, Flower Warrior proclaims the eternal continuity of "Aztec desire" linked to the land and its people.-Steve Seid An exhibition of objects and paintings by Michael Tracy opens at the Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco, March 17.