PURGATORIUM-FIRST PREVIEW

Here it is-11 of the projected 24 pieces for my show- Purgatorium - opening at Bash Contemporary September 5th-October 5th, Artist reception 6th 6pm - 9pm-all inquiries to info@bashcontemporary.com, (415) 926-8573 www.bashcontemporary.com

 Good Wombs Have Borne Bad Sons-oil on canvas
-48"x36" $3500

 What's Past is Prologue-oil on canvas-48"x36" $4000

 A Thousand Furlongs of Sea, For an Acre of Barren Land-oil on canvas-48"x36" $3500

 The Dark and Backwards Abysm of Time- oil on canvas-48"x36" $4000

 Brave New World-oil on canvas-48"x36" $3500

 Misery acquaints man with strange bedfellows-oil on canvas-48"x36" $4500

 So Lie There, My Art-oil on canvas-48"x36" $3000

Poor Worm, Thou Art Infected-oil on canvas-48"x36" $4000

 Night Kept Chained Below-oil on canvas-48"x36" $4500

Space Have I to Lie in Such a Prison-oil on canvas
-48"x36" $4000

He That Dies Pays All Debts-oil on canvas
-48"x36" $5000

Purgatorium

"Hell is Empty and all the Devils are here"
The Tempest-William Shakespeare

In his forty-fifth Year, David Van Gough embarked upon a series which would finally confront the daunting shadow cast by his most famous ancestor, and the inevitable connotations of that surname.

Adopting the characterization of Vincent Van Gogh as martyr– and recapitulating stanzas from Shakespeare's Tempest recast as themes of life's metaphorical exile – Purgatorium (Latin for “the place in between”) sets a chronological backdrop of re-imagined personal biography from the desolate mire of his Liverpudlian upbringing to imagined death and the shadowed here-after.

The series is Van Gough's manifestation of the artist-as-alchemist via an exorcism of our contemporary society that suppresses arcane secrets, the ancient craft, the magical depths. The result is an epic parable of traumatic realization and purification."