Andrew Ellis Johnson

Tentative initial gestures in a painting are referred to as an “understudy.”

“Understudied” is a twelve-part cycle for the hours, a repeating perpetual nature morte that suppresses the extravagance of Dutch still life materialism. Each panel highlights a silver platter containing a fleshed out week’s supply of an AZT cocktail.*

Pharmaceutical companies spend more each year on advertising than they do on research and development. A new and improved strain of AIDS was reported of late in medical journals, while 40,000,000 people were newly infected with the HIV virus last year alone.

There have been 22 million estimated deaths from the beginning of the epidemic through 2001, leaving 14 million orphans.

The pandemic remains underreported, understudied and without remedy.

At the dawn of perception

in moments of apprehension

apparitions await substantiation.

Desire seeks a body.

Dreams fail the flesh