Tears well at the mere thought of Hugh Steers’s paintings. He is among a mere handful of figurative artists who could capture, with quiet sensitivity, the stricken beauty and loss of humanity wrought by the AIDS epidemic in the United States. His largely domestic tableaux are inhabited by lithe, youthful men who either lie in repose, caress one another, or tend to mundane ablutions. His melancholy atmospherics are enhanced by dramatic contrasts between vivid color and dusky shadow. Sometimes his subjects are subdued, attached to lifesaving hospital equipment; at other times they seem joyous, strutting around in high heels and posing in gay finery. But these happier moments were absent from “Conjuring Tenderness: Paintings from 1987,” a solo presentation of the artist’s work here. On view were seven oils on canvas and two small-scale oils on paper, made the year Steers received his positive diagnosis. He was just thirty-two when the disease claimed him in 1995.
Most of the artist’s diaristic vignettes featured couples, nude or in their underwear, who appeared shut off from the outside world and consumed by reverie. Watching them felt intrusive, voyeuristic. Take Shower Curtain, which depicted a pair of lovers in a bathroom. One is standing in the tub, his face obscured by the titular barrier as he casually plays with himself. His companion kneels on the floor guzzling an unseen substance from a saucière-like vessel. The heart of the composition is illuminated by a shaft of warm, buttery light that falls on an orange wall and a red tablecloth before fading into the surrounding gloom. Steers’s choice of setting is apt, because it’s where a gamut of bodily actions play out: In this room we scrub, comb, and finesse ourselves into sexy healthfulness for the public’s delectation. We store our pills here or consider our mortality in the mirror when we feel spent and sickly. We use this space to piss, shit, and cum in private, or to wash all the effluvia off ourselves after a particularly long and fun-filled evening. An empty water jug rests on a small table in this picture, reminiscent of those rudimentary bathing practices of yore that were believed to be life enhancing or healing. But in this context the jug seems a nod to the inefficacy of medical options for those living with HIV during Steers’s lifetime.
A ruminative sense of calm near the abyss was most keenly felt in the modestly scaled At the Mirror. One guy stands in front of a looking glass checking himself out, while another sits on the floor watching him. Their wordless bond in the soft-blue chamber is unbearably sorrowful. Steers’s work generates a gnawing sense of distance: He depicts a generation wasted—all that brilliant promise extinguished—from an age that feels nearly vanished from memory. Now, the specter of AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections is being swept away by a tidal wave of pharmaceutical prophylactics such as PrEP and DoxyPEP, drugs that have ushered in a new era of carnal abandon. Steers’s queer counterparts today will never know the horror that befell him and his contemporaries. That makes his work more vital than ever, for if we forget who and what came before us, we will be left with a flawed compass for the journey ahead.
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Read full article at artforum.com.
