MORAGA, CALIFORNIA.- Beginning January 15, 2005, the Hearst Art Gallery of Saint Mary’s College will debut */Paradiso/*, the third installment of a remarkable update on Dante Alighieri’s early 14^th century epic poem about the human condition by contemporary Southern California artist, Sandow Birk. Birk has collaborated with writer and editor Marcus Sanders to infuse Dante’s text with a contemporary urban vernacular. Saint Mary’s College professor Brother Michael Meister, FSC, who has collected and computerized more than 50 different English-language translations of the/ Divine Comedy, /provided scholarly guidance with the re-working of the three Cantos. The exhibition will be on view through February 17, 2005.

Birk’s paintings, drawings and lithographs are infused with satire, political content, humor, and irony. The /Inferno,/ set in Los Angeles, and the /Purgatorio,/ set in San Francisco, has been widely acclaimed during recent exhibitions in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. /Paradiso/ is set in New York.

A recipient of Fulbright, Getty, and Guggenheim Fellowships and National Endowment for the Arts grants, Birk's work has been shown at major museums and galleries around the country. He is represented by Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Los Angeles, Catherine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, and PPOW in New York, with work is in the permanent collections of the di Rosa Preserve in Napa, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the New York Historical Society.