Icons secrets

Icons is probably one of my most significant works of my artistic approach.

It's a homoerotic version of the Pietà by Michelangelo, iconic sculpture of the Virgin Mary crying for her son. She holds him on her knees, after the descent of the Cross.

Here, the female character is replaced by a man. A male authority, a master ? God Himself ?

On the feet and hands of the Slave, the stigmata of crucifixion turned into tattoos.

As the Risen Christ, the Slave, down for now, will come back to life.

My second inspiration comes from Robert Mapplethorpe and his iconic photography Ridley and Lyle Heeter. We can see a leather Master, holding a riding crop, standing by the chair where his slave sits, chained. An evocation of the traditional representation of a heterosexual bourgeois couple : the husband doesn’t leave the seat to his wife only out of courtesy, but also to express his domination over her.

Here, we imagine the rest, after the sexual celebration : the chains are broken, the whip has long  replaced the riding crop, the Master is resting and supports his exhausted Slave. He defies us with the same proud and assumed gaze than in the Mapplethorpe photography.

His appearance reminds clearly the Tom of Finland iconography.

The last reference, more subtle, is the labyrinth we can notice on the floor, the same as on the ground of the Chartres Cathedral, in France. The chair of the Master is placed in its centre.

Like two pilgrims, Master and Slave are walking on the path of pain and pleasure, with mutual trust, opening up, step by step, to what’s beyond them, to find the meaning of their life.

I hesitated before naming this work Icons.

I almost named it Love. Isn’t Love a narrow way between suffering and happiness ?