Hyaena Gallery Presents:
MAN/SON and the Haunting of the American Madonna
Oil Paintings by David Van Gough
October 1 through October 31
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 6, 8 pm to 12 am
1928 W. Olive Ave.
Burbank, CA 91506
Bill Shafer, Director
Artist Website: http://davidgoughart.com
On Saturday, October 6, David Van Gough reveals a dark new series inspired by one of Los Angeles' most enduring and infamous villains. From Aleister Crowley to Charles Manson, Liverpool to LA, MAN/SON explores an artistic evocation of America's occult underbelly. Taking cues from the bloody epithet's left at the crime scenes, and associated key phrases, the series draws upon his own year-long research into what he terms as sinister architecture, conspiracy, clandestine rituals, magic symbols and the tragic muse-Sharon Tate, recapitulated as the American Madonna and child.
Artist Statement:
Growing up in Liverpool in the 70's was akin to living in a forgotten town.
The golden gate to the new frontier that had been the shipyards lay dormant. The modern tenements that had been constructed on the promises of post-war zeal two decades earlier, now lay in ruin.
And the Beatles had disbanded in 1970.
Yet they were still ubiquitous. The chorus of moptop's echo on every wireless was Liverpool's swansong.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in California, time had been called on the Sixties. And a dreadful pall hung over the subsequent era like an incomprehensible epitaph: Helter Skelter and the Manson Murders.
Back in my Liverpool bedroom overlooking Anfield cemetery, a few yards from the railway line where four year old Jamie Bulger would be murdered by two boys in the mid 1980's, I was immersed in the subculture of fantagoria -- Hammer Horror, Dennis Wheatley, Man,Myth and Magic -- little realizing that terrible events in an affluent suburb of LA, and a song by Liverpool's favorite sons, were intertwined with Friday night Horror staples such as Rosemary's Baby and The Fearless Vampire Killers.
In my journey, there have been threads that go beyond mere happenstance, symbols and ciphers that are window dressing for something profound and dark beneath. In commencing then with the new series, utilizing the tragic muse and slain Madonna figure of Sharon Tate as a symbol for an endpoint, there was a need to relate and process that which is beyond understanding.
Peter Levenda's words in Sinister Forces Book III sum it up for me, "...for the occultist-there is truly "no such thing as coincidence," or more accurately, that coincidence is a clue that deeper connections exist between observable phenomena, that another force of nature is at work that we don't understand."
The MAN/SON series seeks to make sense of those fatal events of 1969, and what I have come to term as sinister architecture.
The golden gate to the new frontier that had been the shipyards lay dormant. The modern tenements that had been constructed on the promises of post-war zeal two decades earlier, now lay in ruin.
And the Beatles had disbanded in 1970.
Yet they were still ubiquitous. The chorus of moptop's echo on every wireless was Liverpool's swansong.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in California, time had been called on the Sixties. And a dreadful pall hung over the subsequent era like an incomprehensible epitaph: Helter Skelter and the Manson Murders.
Back in my Liverpool bedroom overlooking Anfield cemetery, a few yards from the railway line where four year old Jamie Bulger would be murdered by two boys in the mid 1980's, I was immersed in the subculture of fantagoria -- Hammer Horror, Dennis Wheatley, Man,Myth and Magic -- little realizing that terrible events in an affluent suburb of LA, and a song by Liverpool's favorite sons, were intertwined with Friday night Horror staples such as Rosemary's Baby and The Fearless Vampire Killers.
In my journey, there have been threads that go beyond mere happenstance, symbols and ciphers that are window dressing for something profound and dark beneath. In commencing then with the new series, utilizing the tragic muse and slain Madonna figure of Sharon Tate as a symbol for an endpoint, there was a need to relate and process that which is beyond understanding.
Peter Levenda's words in Sinister Forces Book III sum it up for me, "...for the occultist-there is truly "no such thing as coincidence," or more accurately, that coincidence is a clue that deeper connections exist between observable phenomena, that another force of nature is at work that we don't understand."
Artist Biography:
Working out of San Diego, David Van Gough is an oil painter who strives to expose the darkest recesses of the human spirit on canvas. A self-proclaimed necrorealist, Van Gough grew up steps from a cemetery in gritty Liverpool. Tormented throughout his life by Catholic guilt, mortality and paranoia, his paintings are fevered exorcisms, which comment upon both the futileness and poignancy of the universal human condition.
Gough was the Honoree Artist of 2010 at the San Diego Art Institute. In 2009, Gough was published in the book Gothic Art Now. In 2011 Darq Matter Publishing released Gough's collection of fine art and essays D3ad/Ends. He has exhibited at San Diego Art Institute, Oceanside Museum of Art, The Hive Gallery, Alexander Salazar Fine Art, Alternative Café, Mosaic Gallery, and Thumbprint Gallery.
Publicity contact for more information, interviews, high resolution images:
Dahlia Jane Upon a Midnight Dreary
847-712-2688
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