Luminous Jesus

Luminous Jesus
8 x 14"
darkhold
Marius Black
2006

I made the dark hold series when I was still in college. Back when my sewed fingers where just rubber bands and black markers. Since I didn't have a digital camera to capture my works, I created something I had seen on TV. 

Scanning objects, treating the scanner as a kind of camera and  producing something out of that tableau of an image. I called mine Dark Hold, where I would turn off the lights and hold as steady as I could the image I wanted to produce. most of the time I only had to do it once, but sometimes I move accidentally or it's unaligned so I had to redo it. 
 

In this specific piece I tried to hold Jesus up like a cross. Symbolizing how we're the ones who crucified him and it is us why he went through all of that in the first place. I also took this Jesus from a cheap crucifix where he's luminous. And that also says a lot about us, we make figures of Christ cheaply into a glow in the dark artifact but we seldom realize that the glow in the dark stuff is made from cat piss. This is somewhat analogous to  Andres Serrano's Piss Christ.

Piss Christ, Andres Serrano 1987

 I was not aware of the existence of Piss Christ or any of Serrano's works when I made my Luminous Jesus artwork. I only found out about it and Serrano in the reality TV show Work of Art, where real life artists from all walks of life are pitted against each other for a cash prize and art recognition. Too bad it only survived 2 seasons. But it was a good two seasons if I say so my self.

Going back to the Piss Christ. I find that similarly we both tackled piss in the context, I didn't really intend to bring piss into the conversation just now but it does have similar tones to it suggesting that how we treat the image of Christ, his words and his sacrifice to disgusting proportions but internally he still endures, and so must we.