“Hugh Steers: Blue Towel, Red Tank,” an exhibition at David Zwirner, Paris

“Blue Towel, Red Tank” is the first European presentation of “More Life,” a series of solo exhibitions shown throughout 2021, the fortieth anniversary of the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis, which highlight artists whose lives were cut short by HIV/AIDS-related complications during the first twenty years of the epidemic. After being diagnosed as HIV-positive at the age of twenty-five, Steers went on to create work that illustrated the physical and psychic spaces of sickness as well as the compassion shared among his circle. Despite his devastating subject matter, Steers’s canvases are suffused with empathy, pathos, and even humour. Although he died when he was only thirty-two years old, Steers managed to create a resolved and mature body of work that illuminated the physical and psychic spaces of sickness to a larger world, memorialising the loss of both individuals and an entire culture.

“In a Hugh Steers painting we witness a sliver of daily existence with such authenticity and truth it vibrates.” — Russell Tovey, Curator

On view now until 29 January 2022 at David Zwirner
108 Rue Vieille du Temple, 75003 Paris