PURGATORIUM Purgatorium is a total art project with site-specific concept, which combines a contemporary visual art work with classical cultural values. The project focuses on the great and challenging theme of the Purgatory and tries to discover its meaning from the contemporary perspective, offering one possible approach to its present-day interpretation. Project Purgatorium is designed to be disposed in spaces with characteristic sensibility, meaning and significance, such as chapels, churches or sites with peculiar historical context, such as memorial sites and historic buildings and locations, where this art project can build upon the context of the place, bringing together different elements into interaction, with the aim to explore philosophical, ethical and aesthetic relations between them. The universal idea of Purgatory is liberation of human being from its basic instincts in order to achieve spiritual purification. Used as a familiar spiritual metaphor, project Purgatorium illustrates the humiliating side of human weakness and communicates with the spectator’s intuitive and emotional representation of “offenses against universal order of things”. By using different effects in order to invoke cathartic transition of spiritual liberation, this artwork, which stands for artist’s personal confession and exposure of an intimate reflection, calls attention to negative wishes, immoral thoughts, obscenity, despair and perversion, normally despised by the spectator. Thus through a feeling of degradation, it creates a transition path towards refinement and emancipation, resembling or even stimulating religious experience of purification through prayer and redemption through confession.
Purgatorium is envisaged as a total art project which, by means of specific and innovative concept of presentation, stimulates perception of the art work’s idea through different senses. In other words, the entire context of presentation such as space and its meaning, sounds and even smell, are all treated as part of the art work itself in order to provoke specific experience in the mind of the spectator and to increase the very perception of the art work’s message. The project aims to provoke reflection on the contemporary meaning of traditional values and their relation to our modern day spiritual aspirations and our value system. The process is enabled through a symbolical, and yet physical passing through “the Tunnel of Purification”.
The form of presentation of the project is an interactive exhibition-installation, which includes different media: painting, installation, sound, smell, literature, specific site. It is composed of: • one huge, seven pieces, poliptych painting (dimensions: 160 x 840 cm), featuring more than 140 figures - picturing a modern day visual interpretation of Purgatory,
• recorded reading of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy - Purgatory (as an audio background) - introducing classical interpretation and putting forward long-established perspective on the theme of Purgatory,
• a transparent Plexiglas tunnel (the polyptich painting hangs from the inner side of it, like on the wall from one side) - representing the „Tunnel of Purification“,
• forest soil (covers the floor of the tunnel) - it is soft, moist and releases the scent of forest. This very ordinary, yet exceptionally characteristic smell is direct association to deep nature. It is at the same time a kind of play with direct reminiscence of the beginning of First chapter of the Dante Alighieri’s Purgatory and the scene of sudden finding of one-self in the midst of the dark forest in the middle of one’s life,
• location of specific context (such as chapel, church, cathedral, memorial site etc). The audience passes through the „Tunnel of purification“, which is a Plexiglas frame in the shape of the tunnel, all the time walking on the forest soil, smelling the scent of the forest, listening to recited classical literature text on Purgatory and observes its contemporary visualization. The specific context of the place or site where “the Tunnel of Purification” is positioned acts as a prelude for the art work’s universal idea and introduces the spectator into the art work’s narrative. On the other hand, the dramatic aspect of such a place is so strong that it imposes itself as an integral part of the entire artistic intervention, and forces the spectator to a new reading.
Zoran Velimanovic, artist
PURGATORIUM Purgatorium is a total art project with site-specific concept, which combines a contemporary visual art work with classical cultural values. The project focuses on the great and challenging theme of the Purgatory and tries to discover its meaning from the contemporary perspective, offering one possible approach to its present-day interpretation. Project Purgatorium is designed to be disposed in spaces with characteristic sensibility, meaning and significance, such as chapels, churches or sites with peculiar historical context, such as memorial sites and historic buildings and locations, where this art project can build upon the context of the place, bringing together different elements into interaction, with the aim to explore philosophical, ethical and aesthetic relations between them. The universal idea of Purgatory is liberation of human being from its basic instincts in order to achieve spiritual purification. Used as a familiar spiritual metaphor, project Purgatorium illustrates the humiliating side of human weakness and communicates with the spectator’s intuitive and emotional representation of “offenses against universal order of things”. By using different effects in order to invoke cathartic transition of spiritual liberation, this artwork, which stands for artist’s personal confession and exposure of an intimate reflection, calls attention to negative wishes, immoral thoughts, obscenity, despair and perversion, normally despised by the spectator. Thus through a feeling of degradation, it creates a transition path towards refinement and emancipation, resembling or even stimulating religious experience of purification through prayer and redemption through confession.
Purgatorium is envisaged as a total art project which, by means of specific and innovative concept of presentation, stimulates perception of the art work’s idea through different senses. In other words, the entire context of presentation such as space and its meaning, sounds and even smell, are all treated as part of the art work itself in order to provoke specific experience in the mind of the spectator and to increase the very perception of the art work’s message. The project aims to provoke reflection on the contemporary meaning of traditional values and their relation to our modern day spiritual aspirations and our value system. The process is enabled through a symbolical, and yet physical passing through “the Tunnel of Purification”.
The form of presentation of the project is an interactive exhibition-installation, which includes different media: painting, installation, sound, smell, literature, specific site. It is composed of: • one huge, seven pieces, poliptych painting (dimensions: 160 x 840 cm), featuring more than 140 figures - picturing a modern day visual interpretation of Purgatory,
• recorded reading of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy - Purgatory (as an audio background) - introducing classical interpretation and putting forward long-established perspective on the theme of Purgatory,
• a transparent Plexiglas tunnel (the polyptich painting hangs from the inner side of it, like on the wall from one side) - representing the „Tunnel of Purification“,
• forest soil (covers the floor of the tunnel) - it is soft, moist and releases the scent of forest. This very ordinary, yet exceptionally characteristic smell is direct association to deep nature. It is at the same time a kind of play with direct reminiscence of the beginning of First chapter of the Dante Alighieri’s Purgatory and the scene of sudden finding of one-self in the midst of the dark forest in the middle of one’s life,
• location of specific context (such as chapel, church, cathedral, memorial site etc). The audience passes through the „Tunnel of purification“, which is a Plexiglas frame in the shape of the tunnel, all the time walking on the forest soil, smelling the scent of the forest, listening to recited classical literature text on Purgatory and observes its contemporary visualization. The specific context of the place or site where “the Tunnel of Purification” is positioned acts as a prelude for the art work’s universal idea and introduces the spectator into the art work’s narrative. On the other hand, the dramatic aspect of such a place is so strong that it imposes itself as an integral part of the entire artistic intervention, and forces the spectator to a new reading.
Zoran Velimanovic, artist