Untitled

Amid the AIDS crisis in New York in the 1980s, Bleckner developed a mode of painting hazy forms, whether dots, birds, or flowers, like this one. His paintings offer the sensation of examining something under a microscope, but the proximity brings ambiguity rather than clarity. Set against dark backgrounds, these meditations on loss and grief become memento mori—reminders of the inevitability of death. Bleckner comments, “The way I chose to address [AIDS] was by making certain elements of my work act as memorials… I try to think about it in a way that documents images that are symbolic of the loss we feel—the loss of people and the loss of a certain relationship to culture.”