Apocalypse Now or For Ever — Chapter 16: The Curse (after the Apocalypse of St. John)

Chapter 16 of Revelation recounts the pouring out of the seven bowls of divine wrath — sores upon humanity, the sea and rivers turned to blood, scorching heat from the sun, darkness over the throne of the beast, and the great earthquake. Maystorov's lithograph concentrates this catalogue of plagues into a single charged image of judgment, drawing on the tonal density that lithographic crayon and tusche permit. The medium's capacity for dense passages of black against luminous reserved whites lends itself to the chiaroscuro of cataclysmic subject matter, and the cycle's chapter-by-chapter logic invites distinct compositional resolutions for each successive vision. As the destructive counterpart to the enthronement of Chapter 4, 'The Curse' carries the series toward its eschatological climax. The full Apocalypse Now or For Ever cycle, executed in 2000, represents one of Maystorov's extended literary print sequences and dates from the period in which his graphics circulated through the Lessedra Bulgarian-Japanese print exchange.