APOTHECARY (storehouse): new paintings by David Schorr presented recent work depicting antique apothecary bottles with imagined contents. Meticulously executed in gouache and silverpoint on luxurious, colored Fabriano Roma papers, these paintings reveal bottles floating mysteriously, oblivious to gravity. An unknown bright light glistens on the curves and bevels of the amber, green, blue, or brown vessels, occasionally shimmering through their contents. What contents these bottles hold: Deep Dark Secret, Bad Intentions, Calm Seas, Furtive Glances, Love Remembered, Sleepless Nights, and Lazy Afternoons. Many of the labels are in foreign languages: Hungarian, German, French, Italian, Yiddish, and others. The mysteries deepen.

Yet even when we understand the labels, what are we to make ofRough Magic or Present Mirth? In a delightful and insightful essay in the accompanying catalog, Phyllis Rose, Wesleyan Professor of English, Emerita, identifies Shakespeare's Tempest and Twelfth Nightas the sources for these two phrases. Many more labels remain obscure, tantalizing the viewer, for whom the bottles dance just out of reach.

David Schorr is Professor of Art at Wesleyan University.APOTHECARY (storehouse) presented more than 100 paintings on paper and a selection of the antique bottles which inspired the artist. Although the exhibition has closed at the DAC, APOTHECARY will be on view at the Mary Ryan Gallery, New York City, in spring 2012. A 180-page full-color catalog accompanies the exhibition.