February 2010
Zachari Logan
February 5-28, 2010
New Paintings / One Month Exhibit
Vernissage Friday February 5, 2010/ 7 – 10pm
The Lazarus Series
The drawing that initially instigated this series, titled Le Petit Mort, was a piece I did of two male figures with their heads veiled by cloth, embracing with what appeared to be fetishist objects strapped to their sides… an erotic image of possible suicide bombers in an instance of intimacy. This drawing was for me a metaphor for the frailties of human sexuality, and the dangers of touch. The bodies, dissolving into the white of the paper, both symbolize annihilation- the very tangible obliteration of bodies through explosion and the release of ejaculation (relating directly to the title which, in French means “the little death” a slang for ejaculation). From this piece came The Lazarus Series This work having its main reference taken from the Biblical narrative The Raising of Lazarus. A story of interest to me because of its allusions to the homoerotic and imagery related to sexuality and male-male intimacy. The figures in these works, whose identities have been removed by the covering of their faces, rather than their bodies, evoke a similar narrative of human frailty. Unlike the drawing Le Petit Mort, in the Lazarus drawings the bodies never embrace, there is touch and sometimes only the inference thereof. So the work becomes about distance and relational dynamics. In the story of The Raising of Lazarus (in which the title character never speaks) Jesus raises Lazarus from being formerly four days dead, this “Little Death” becomes a life saver, a necromancer’s wet dream.
