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Sleepless Nights, 2015, Lithograph in 8 colors, 19 x 26 inches (48.3 x 66 cm), Edition of 25

Sleepless Nights,

2015
Lithograph in 8 colors
19 x 26 inches (48.3 x 66 cm)
Edition of 25
David Schorr’s APOTHECARY series of paintings on paper depict vintage Apothecary bottles and their imagined contents. Schorr worked on the on the APOTHECARY series from 2009 to 2011, culminating in an exhibition and an artist’s book.  In 2015, Schorr revisited this series with a pair of lithographs: Lazy Afternoons and Sleepless Nights — the only prints in the series.  These two works are the same throughout their respective editions, but the paper varies throughout, as Schorr was unable to secure enough of the same color Italian paper to complete each edition.

In an exercise of quiet romance, Schorr’s APOTHECARY series harnesses the unexpected flood of Proustian nostalgia and affection that one might feel upon beholding an everyday object. In this series, Schorr directs his attention to antique apothecary bottles whose content most literally contain the innermost thoughts, memories, emotions and secrets that are conjured throughout a lifetime. The labels of each precious bottle are written in several different languages (such as English, Italian, German, Hungarian, Yiddish, among others.) Together, the bottles paint an intimate portrait of the artist himself, and the remarkable life that he led.

Schorr explained, “For a problem that had been plaguing me, a wise ophthalmologist suggested I try artificial tears. In gratitude I made him a drawing of an apothecary bottle I had salvaged from my father’s medical office, changing the Latin of the original label to the Latin for ‘artificial tears.’ I got interested in drawing more of these bottles and started to collect them on eBay. Because I had long wanted a place to put away cherished values or to hide shameful thoughts, I discovered to my delight that the Greek word ΑΠΟΘΗΚΗ, from which our word ‘apothecary’ derives, means storehouse.”

 
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Sleepless Nights, 2015, Lithograph in 8 colors, 19 x 26 inches (48.3 x 66 cm), Edition of 25
Sleepless Nights, 2015
Lithograph in 8 colors
19 x 26 inches (48.3 x 66 cm)
Edition of 25