Sante D'Orazio: Priests

Created in 2007, Dorazio's Priests are large scale, black-and-white photographic portraits of contemporary artists adorned in Catholic robes and posing with various objects of the faith. Twelve works from the series are on view, and participating artists include Nobyuoshi Araki, Matthew Barney, Maurizio Cattelan, Francesco Clemente, George Condo, Tom Friedman, Damien Hirst, Alex Katz, Jeff Koons, Richard Meier, Ed Ruscha and Philip Taaffe. Described by D'Orazio as "the people who are creating modern-day objects of worship", Priests investigates the role of artists in the 21st Century, who historically have often acted as intermediaries between heaven and earth in their ability to represent the intangible and convey a sense of the sublime.

Sante D'Orazio was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1956 to Italian immigrant parents and was raised in a Catholic home. He first trained as a painter and attended Brooklyn College while studying with photographer Lou Bernstein, a member of The New York Photo League, and painter Philip Pearlstein. His work has been exhibited widely in museums around the world, including Haus der Kunst, Munich, Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and NRW Forum in Düsseldorf, among others. His work has also been shown in galleries in Berlin, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo. D'Orazio currently lives and works in New York.