"Azaceta’s work presents a powerful conflation of schlocky B-movie horror and incisive black humor. Your worst dreams have come true yet somehow they’re fascinating to watch. "Shit My Head Is Burning But My Heart Is Filled With Love", 1981, is an iconic depiction of the human condition, in which it is impossible to distinguish whether the figure’s head is consumed in flames or adorned with a crown. As if to emphasize this quasireligious martyrdom, a knife pierces his cheek and blood drips down his cheek. In the most arresting part of the image, the eye of this post-Modern Christ figure pops right out of its socket as if he cannot stop himself from looking, yet can’t live with what he sees."

– Thomas McEvilley for Artforum, January 1995 edition

"In another painting from the early 1980s, Shit My Head Is Burning But
My Heart Is Filled With Love (1981), Azaceta articulated an imaginative, inward
looking self-portrait in which the artist is wearing a crown of flames, suggesting
that his mind is on fire (feverish?) even while he possesses feelings of
vulnerability and tenderness (the bloody knife)."

Hell: Luis Cruz Azaceta Selected Works 1978-1993 Catalog