By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
The Bezpala Brown Gallery of Toronto is set to unveil a new exhibit that includes a bullet-ridden portrait of Pope Benedict XVI as part of a line-up of some of modern history’s most evil men.
Postmedia News is reporting that the gallery will feature 30 paintings and four sculptures by Peter Alexander Por, a Hungarian who claims to have been raised Catholic, in an exhibit entitled “Persona Non Grata – The Veil of History.” According to the gallery, the exhibit is intended to portray “the story of oppression, pain, suffering, persecution and death.”
A portrait of Pope Benedict XVI, which is riddled with bullet holes, is featured among Por’s portraits of evil men, which include Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mussolin, and Kim Il Sung. The gallery explained the inclusion of the Pope in such a sordid line-up as a“less than subtle expression of the hurt and anger directed at a pontiff and an institution that has abandoned its flock, choosing to focus on dogma while its subjects suffer and, in many instances, die from its archaic policies.”
The same exhibit features President Obama as a victim nailed to a cross “by the political and corporate machinery of today’s America.”
One art critic blames Por’s experience of the Second World War as a reason behind the controversial exhibit.
`The existence of cruelty and murder offends him personally and he cannot forget it,” says art critic Judy Stoffman in a gallery press release. “It is as though he lacks the protective skin that most people have developed to be able to function.”
The exhibit is set to open on February 5.
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