Desire

Ernesto Pujol curated Desire from the Visual AIDS archive, as both an online exhibition and then a traveling show that was exhibited at:

• National Arts Club, New York City in July 1999
• Robert B. Menschel Photography Gallery at the Schine Student Center of Syracuse University, August 30 - October 17, 1999

Artists include: Bern Boyle, Bruce Cratsley, Jimmy De Sana, John Dugdale, Carlos Gutierrez-Solana, Michael Harwood, Edward Lightner, Mark Morrisroe, Luna Luis Ortiz, Tara Popick, Ferenc Suto, Jorge Veras, Joel Wateres and Albert J. Winn.

In Pujol's curatorial statement, he say:

"I am currently fascinated by contemporary photography. I am very interested in exploring images of masculinity within the medium. This selection from the Visual AIDS' Archive Project is comprised of 11 photographers engaged in portraiture, conceptions of the male body and issues of desire. HIV and AIDS have too quickly created a contemporary visual history of the sadly ravaged male body. More than ever before, in the visual history of its representation, the male body has become the battleground of great political, social and economic forces, making it extremely fragile and ephemeral. However, what strikes me about these 22 images is their sensuality. These works not only effectively feed my "professional curatorial concerns," but also much of the unapologetic voyeurism I am personally capable of. It is true that through them I journey richly from health to illness, from beauty to pathos. But as I finish visually consuming them, as any spectator does, sadness is not what defines my mood, but the strangely mundane post-orgasmic feeling that the day must go on without any great drama because these artists have successfully portrayed the often inevitable emotional and physical messiness of life. Desire does co-exist with death; the body of a young man with HIV or AIDS is still the body of a young man. The self-portrait of an artist with HIV or AIDS is not completely defined by that laboratory fact. Thus, these are works that refuse to be encased by that news; they put forth too much beauty and elicit too much desire for that"

A publication of the exhibition was produced by Light Work, Contact Sheet 103