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Untitled (2427608) (n. d.) Untitled (2427608) Artist: Jonathan Borofsky Dating: n. d. Type: Work on paper Material: Ballpoint pen on paper Measures: 12,7 x 7,7 cm Acces / purchase date: 1989 Inventory number: 0569b Copyright: © Jonathan Borofsky; Fotos: André-Marc Räubig (Inv.-Nr. 0567–0569, 0646–0647) -
Untitled (2515729) (n. d.) Untitled (2515729) Artist: Jonathan Borofsky Dating: n. d. Type: Work on paper Material: Ballpoint pen on paper Measures: 21,5 x 27,8 cm Acces / purchase date: 1989 Inventory number: 0568 Copyright: © Jonathan Borofsky; Fotos: André-Marc Räubig (Inv.-Nr. 0567–0569, 0646–0647) -
Untitled (2,495,559) (n. d.) Untitled (2,495,559) Artist: Jonathan Borofsky Dating: n. d. Type: Work on paper Material: Ballpoint pen on paper Measures: 24,3 x 15,3 cm Acces / purchase date: 1989 Inventory number: 0567 Copyright: © Jonathan Borofsky; Fotos: André-Marc Räubig (Inv.-Nr. 0567–0569, 0646–0647) -
Untitled (2686889) (n. d.) Untitled (2686889) Artist: Jonathan Borofsky Dating: n. d. Type: Work on paper Material: Ballpoint pen on paper Measures: 15,2 x 10,2 cm Acces / purchase date: 1989 Inventory number: 0569a Copyright: © Jonathan Borofsky; Fotos: André-Marc Räubig (Inv.-Nr. 0567–0569, 0646–0647) -
Untitled (2445660A) (1977) Untitled (2445660A) Artist: Jonathan Borofsky Dating: 1977 Type: Work on paper Material: Felt-tip pen on paper Measures: 21,5 x 31 cm Acces / purchase date: 1995 Inventory number: 0646 Copyright: © Jonathan Borofsky; Fotos: André-Marc Räubig (Inv.-Nr. 0567–0569, 0646–0647) -
Untitled (2.260.384) (1975/1976) Untitled (2.260.384) Artist: Jonathan Borofsky Dating: 1975/1976 Type: Work on paper Material: India ink and pencil on paper on cotton Measures: 159,5 x 229 cm Acces / purchase date: 1995 Inventory number: 0647 Copyright: © Jonathan Borofsky; Fotos: André-Marc Räubig (Inv.-Nr. 0567–0569, 0646–0647)
The large Borofsky drawing 2,260,384 in the Baloise collection is a fine example of his monumental approach to both drawing and the legacy of minimal art. Here the artist limits his interventions as much as possible to allow the human figure to surge out of the white reserve of the sheet of paper. In this body, reduced as it is to a few lines, we can already make out the silhouette and artificial forms of the artist’s large-scale sculptures that would later be installed in city spaces, such as the “Hammering Man” (1989) in Basel’s Aeschenplatz.
But the great inspiration for Borofsky’s drawings lies especially in the artist’s dreams. That can be seen in the page from a small ring notebook 2445660A, where he has drawn a figure armed with a sword and shining a spotlight on a young man seated with his back to the wall in felt-tip pen. In a style that blends the legacy of Philip Guston, a certain influence from Robert Crumb, and a distant reminder of Renaissance classicism, Borofsky asserts his own idiom here. Combining the simplicity of forms with an access to the hermetic world of the unconscious, this idiom surfaces, for example, in the portrait of a character with a hairy hypertrophic head (drawing 2686889). A triangle on its forehead with a point at its center seems to form something like a third eye on this flabbergasted-looking figure. Its head, lacking a neck, rests on what appears to be a leaf with four stems that are akin to the legs of an insect. In this hybrid world where the kingdoms mix and melt into one another, Borofsky also finds animals, like the bird whose flight closely follows a spiral, while a giant fish with an expressive face takes on a barely outlined human form.
A subtle blend of the simplicity of its forms and a visual language that everyone can understand, drawing in Jonathan Borofsky’s work reflects his universalist vision of art, which has taken shape on the fringes of the great urban centers, independent of contemporary trends.
Julie Enckell Julliard