featured gallery for April 2003

Immortality ...

As someone who came of adolescent age in the mid-80s, the AIDS crisis is something that has been a part of my life since I was able to think about myself functioning in the world. The cocoon of familiarity that is a part of most high school lives was about to give way to the ideas that accompany leaving home and making a way in the world. Yet the AIDS crisis continues, a fabric of our lives. This selection looks on a wide range of subjects with some variations on the themes of landscape and portraiture, people making their way in the world, staking a claim and just plain living life.

Curating a show from the vast trove of Visual AIDS' Archive was simultaneously disheartening to feel the pain; and fulfilling for the feeling of joy in the creation of poignant and incisive artworks. From Rene Santos' photograph of 1979 to the acrylic on canvas work of Christopher Trujillo, I selected a range of artworks that tell stories in and of their moment, like all good art does. There are big names like Frank Moore and Paul Thek and artists I knew little about whose work is deserving of wider attention. May this exhibition spur such opportunities for the body of the artists' work and the fortunate viewers.