KELLY WRITERS HOUSE

Gerard DiFalco:
Retrospective 1988-2001

Madrid Dreams,
Strega Myths

CURATOR'S THOUGHTS

By Peter Schwarz

You are the central piece in this exhibit.
You are the integral component in the completion of this exhibit.
You are what remains when you leave this exhibit.

Humanity is incessantly infected by disease, and you are now confronted by two of those diseases: AIDS and Ideology. Both are scourges that exist amongst us, and both have destroyed far too many lives. Madrid Dreams, Strega Myths presents a series of vibrant, surreal cityscapes capped on both ends by the memorials to two Cuban artists: poet Nelson Blanco and pianist Antonio Carbonel. One is dead, the other lives in continuous terror and the threat of reimprisonment; both were persecuted for who they were, what they did, and what they might do.

I hesitate to present this as a "gay exhibit" by a "gay artist". I am not afraid to be a heterosexual who has established a friendship with a homosexual, and I am not afraid to publicly declare my support for universal gay-rights. I present this exhibit as the work of a universal artist who has brilliantly captured two universal human tragedies that as of yet have no cure and continue to infect and devestate universal human lives. Our history is littered with the corpses of victims who perished at the hands of our manias because some of us believed they were not human beings and therefore did not deserve the dignity of being treated as a human being.
"I do not want anybody to have false illusions: National Socialism has made it its primary task to rid the German Reich, and thus, the German People and its life of all those influences which are fatal and ruinous to its existence. And although this purge cannot be accomplished in one day, I do not want to leave the shadow of a doubt as to the fact that sooner or later the hour of liquidation will strike for those phenomena which have participated in this corruption. From now on we will wage an unrelenting war of purification against the elements of putrefaction in our culture."
--Adolf Hitler, in his speech inaugurating the "Great Exhibition of German Art 1937"

We declare that we have advanced from those savage days, yet we continue to define and categorize our fellow citizens, and if they do not fulfill our criteria then they are "the other". Homosexuals, blacks, Jews, Gypsys, Hispanics, immigrants, foreigners, women, the elderly, the disabled: all have been persecuted in one form or another, even in this land of democracy and freedom.

From where does that persecution originate? How can it be so contagious? Persecution and hatred is a disease that can infect anyone regardless of who that person is or to what lifestyle that person ascribes. It can be communicated to anyone else, at any time, and when this disease is transmitted it slowly and excruciatingly dissolves the human being over an agonizing length of time, and what is left?

We exist in a world of hallucinations and mirages. Civilization has progressed through God and Empire, now we have their last vestiges, and we wonder what to believe. It is in our nature as human beings to ceaselessly seek meanings for the incomprehensible, to derive revelations from what we endow with supernatural powers. Ultimately there is a supreme entity, or entities, that we can only visualize through the powers of our imagination and then they exist. In the space of our minds. Projections of our dreams. We worship them and declare our allegiance to them. We admit our insignificance in the grandest scheme ever devised. We are subjugated until we unmask our (G)gods to see what is revealed.

In the face of these scourges, the individual exists. In a glaring, desolate, deceptively pretty world. The individual wanders through the psychedelic day as the shadows loom, seemingly searching for those lost spirits, but the streets are deserted except for a procession, and then it’s night. The ground cracks and splits apart, pieces fall into the night, and there is no return. Where is everyone? They are ghosts who haunt us and ask: Who will you persecute?

Who will you accept?
What will you support?
What will you denounce?
You are the individual.