John Y.

It is unsettling to look on a face that has dropped a petal. In the human face the corrolla of a self blossoms out from a field of reverse gravity called re-cognition. With its wilder experiments in beauty, disease disrupts this recognition. Disease does the work of a stranger who removes the nails from a lumbering familiarity of minds.

These two slides are of a man who is probably suffering from a severe case of tertiary lupus. The disease destroys the somatic tissue of the face resulting in a characteristic “wolf bite” and, again, it is difficult to look at someone with so much damage to his features. A prosthesis was fashioned to replace the lost nose and to mask the excarnated sinuses. But what is most interesting is that the prosthesis is mottled and epoxied to blend in with the surrounding skin. I have a suspicion that it was painted by John Young himself. The prosthesis also shows signs of damage. It is as though John was struggling to make the prosthesis his own and discovered how to paint the memory of flesh.

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