Goya's Penitentiary

My shadow is on my face and its a darkness that I inhibit whenever I can. I find it personal and it is something I can't share with you. Not since I burned my clothes so hastily and proclaimed myself free of the mincing fear of myself have I been so confident. It all began in front of a statue of Goya. I turned to find myself a bandit, a driver, a male drawn too late. In a chapelI was Osiris, my clothes wet and by no means an August body. Unable to recuperate my precious breath, my body roaring. Discriminating. I hold no intimacy, I hallucinated an image of my soulin the background. Flung open at once, oil on a brush, tincture of a animal skin. This inevitable dying horse drug across my flesh, the position in my eyes was struggling, burning of my infection. I was in the painting wide awake. Forty three point eight by thirty two point seven.


- Chris Mansel