Marcus Bergman

Translucent, soft, ambiguous. Using a brush, I cast sculptures as if they were paintings. I sense a history in the surface of wax. Perhaps due to the permanence of binding oil paint to it. However, this history is not on the surface, but in it. A sense of the gay men before us, within an ever-necessary escapism, amid the neon lights, in the forgiving arms of each other. I see us intertwined with them, linked together as if inheriting their monumental grief of a great plague. 
 
The reflection in their eyes, the one of love, longing, and liberation, is translucent like the wax. Beneath it lies perpetual, sorrow-ridden distress. It is reflected in my eyes too. A vague sense of my own demise living inside of me. As the myriad of species that have become and are becoming extinct, I too sense an imminent annihilation. Carrying the weight of a generation lost, immersed in the sensation of being the last kind of a species. Like the dark lines passing under the skin of the sculptures, suggesting an ominous outcome.  
 
I see, or perhaps imagine seeing this, in other gay men’s eyes. A vibrant and fantastical view of the world, diluted with the inherited shame of disease and the awareness of one’s mortality. An ever-approaching extinction, subtly peeking through a sheer curtain of desire. Like the satisfaction in Saint Sebastian’s eyes. That gaze of the great martyr being punished for his divergent belief, accepting his brutal execution as if in pleasure. Perhaps have I turned to this patron saint against the plague to find a way to understand, to be at peace with the feeling of annihilation living inside of us.