Icarian Series: Reliquaries
In the late 1980s the well known San Francisco gym The Muscle System began disposing of many of its leather exercise bench covers. For decades the gym had been a social nexus for the gay male population that would later be decimated by HIV/AIDS. Daniel Goldstein saved almost all of the leather skins of the gym’s workout machines which over the years had been worn smooth and imprinted with the human shapes of the thousands of men who had worked out on them. Icarian II and Angel are two of 28 pieces in this series, named for the Icarian exercise machines from which the leather coverings were taken.
The friction and sweat on each of the leather skins over the years had left markings both indelible and mysterious. Seeing these ghostly images one is reminded of the numinous Shroud of Turin or the Sudarium (literally “sweat-cloth” in Latin), the legendary Veil of St. Veronica that bore the face of Christ. Goldstein lovingly mounted each of these pieces of leather as reliquaries. Icarian II and Angel are both document and memorial to the unique social situation at The Muscle System gym. Here gay men had come together to create communities of erotic love and brotherhood. As HIV/AIDS began to take its toll on many men’s bodies, the regimes of weightlifting and exercise allowed them to maintain a sense of control over their physical well-being.
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