"How strange would appear to be this thing that we call pleasure! And how curiously it is related to what is thought to be its opposite, pain! The two will never be found together in a man, and yet if you seek the one and obtain it, you are almost bound to take the other, as though they were growing from the same stem."


As Plato proposes in Phaedo, there can be no pleasure without pain. Why then, does Lucas Michael insist on reliving the thrill of winning? In his video, "Bjorn Again", Michael extends the momentary endorphin rush of the match point to the very edge of ecstasy. For a moment the viewer is overwhelmed with pleasure, but soon realizes that no matter how skillfully constructed the winning dream, it is inevitably replaced by a feeling of emptiness as the brain's pleasure transmitters dry up and boredom returns.

Still, for those who tend to feel defeated in life, Michael's piece may be oddly therapeutic. The repeated interplay between an obsessive craving for victory and the physical pleasure of winning sits well with psychologists who view emotions as pairs of opposites. When one is experienced, in this case the fear of losing, it triggers an opposing emotion, the thrill of victory. Through the work's surreal repetition, the character's opposing emotion becomes stronger, weakening the sting of the primary.

Shot in a style emulative of the seventies, the piece recalls erstwhile heroes such as Arthur Ash, Guillermo Vilas and Bjorn Borg himself. And while Michael sports the signifiers of a tennis pro (logos on his sleeve, sweatbands and hi-tech racket), he is barely believable as champion. His delusional expression and gluttonous appetite for winning leave little room for adoration.


This is not the first time Michael has appeared in his own work. In "The Kiss", he recasts the classic Hollywood lip lock with himself opposite a graying leading lady. The video opens on an older woman, hair in a bun, gazing lovingly at a shirtless young man (Michael). They move toward each other slowly and embrace. What first appears as a mother's tenderness turns into a passionate kiss as her hair falls around her shoulders, briefly veiling their faces. Her hair then rises back upon her head and they step apart, still locked in a tender gaze.

"The work exposes the double standard of the Hollywood kiss", says Michael, "which is usually between an older man and a younger woman". The woman as aggressor brings a markedly different energy to the roles. As mother and lover, she does not take him, but rather offers herself to him and he accepts.


Although Michael regularly uses himself as actor and model, he insists that the work is less about him and more about the division of the self. "There is always the son or daughter in us," he asserts, "the runaway or the tramp, the killer or the victim. And we all have in it ourselves to be all of these things because we are bombarded by television and movies. We identify with all of their characters. They are part of us. In the end we become very divided people; we can't help it. I am just trying to keep it together."