Viewing page 19 of 22

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

- 10

floats a very fragile ivory figure in molded paper -- a kind of angel. [[arrow pointing left]] Shellburne Thurber says her color photos of empty motel rooms, "stripped of any vestige of the humanity that briefly resided in them...speak of loss." Greer Lankton, a woman born a man, makes grotesquely tender figures of nude androgynes --soft, headless, loose skins hung on the walls like trophies, which she describes as the visual counterparts of watching friends die, "like surgery without anesthesia." Her heavily made-up head of Christ in a black velvet crown of thorns is a probably candidate for Helmsian apoplexy.

The bulk of the exhibition is photography, images often deeply disturbing in their tragic humor or desperate rage. These range from loving portraits to sweet and ferocious homoeroticism to pure pathos. The most terrible object in the exhibition is made by Ramsey McPhillips, to document the torment of his lover, photographer Mark Morrisroe, who, in the process of not going gently, cut the words "Evening Nurses Murdered Me" into his leg. A bloody sheet is crumpled into a container, accompanied by a photograph of the artist curled in agony on the floor; the image is very tiny, as if seen from far away, vanishing into an incomprehensible distance.

Talking about AIDS is necessary. But since ^[[delete symbol]] only the rare and talented person finds the language it deserves, ^[[comma circled]] These visual images take ^[[on]] the burden of communication.