2001
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2001 |
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| Created at a time when Coleman was suffering severe attacks of anaphylactic shock, this painting is the artist’s attempt to manage his fears of illness and mortality. Doctors were unable to determine the cause of these attacks, which often left Coleman covered with red welts—and ironically resembling many of his pestilent subjects. The artist’s already fervid imagination conjured up endless horrifying scenarios, from kidney disease to insect-borne vectors to obscure and deadly tropical fevers. Juxtaposing scientific imagery with pseudo-science and imaginative representations of invisible malevolent forces, Coleman gives a face to his fears, and thus exorcises them. It seems that the concept worked, at least temporarily. Coleman did not suffer a single attack while he was working on this painting, although immediately after finishing, he was again overcome. | |
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| The title and composition of the painting refer to an earlier self-portrait, I Am Joe’s Circulatory System. In the earlier work, the artist surrounds himself with a protective cocoon of scenarios from his past, an identity created from personal history. In this image, however, Coleman brutally rips away his own flesh—reminiscent of “Visible Man” anatomic models for children—to reveal monsters, suturing himself into a frame filled with his own terrors of the future. Medicine and science are inadequate to understand the demons of disease, and protection is only possible through the act of painting itself, an act of faith and will. | ||||||
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