The Series: An Overview
In his various series, Djawid C. Borower combines writing with painting, art with philosophy.
The Current Cycle: Palimpsests
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Die Arbeit an der Idee: Malen und Nachdenken sind in meinem Alltag Prozesse, die ineinander übergehen. Kunst zu schaffen bedeutet für mich, zu philosophieren.
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Working on the idea: Painting and thinking are processes in my everyday life that merge into each other. For me, creating art means philosophizing.
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Pictures of Light. 2008 - 2018
Identity exists only in dissolution: In "Pictures of Light", the depicted subject is dissolved, as it were, by the representation of light. It glides into abstraction and yet remains intact.
Pictures of Time and Nature. 2016 - 2018
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Stilleben sind kunsthistorisch eng verbunden mit der Darstellung der Vergänglichkeit. In meinen „Pictures of Time and Nature“ habe ich den umgekehrten Weg gewählt, indem ich nicht den Prozess des Zerfalls zeige, sondern den der Entstehung. Allerdings führe ich nicht die Entstehung von Blumen selbst dar, sondern die Entstehung des Abbildes der Blüten, also den künstlerischen Prozess.
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In art history, still lifes are closely connected with the depiction of transience. In my "Pictures of Time and Nature" I have chosen the opposite path, showing not the process of decay but that of creation. However, I do not depict the creation of flowers themselves, but the creation of the image of the blossoms, i.e. the artistic process.
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Pictures of Film. 2005 - 2008
Identity can only be perceived if we take different perspectives: In "Pictures of a Film" Borower transfers the possibilities of the moving image, the film, into painting. By showing the same scene from different perspectives and switching from extreme close-ups to long shots, Borower breaks away from painting's claim to take only one picture of an object.
Pictures of Identity. Since 2000
Identity is always fragmented and can only be understood in its permutation: This series revolves around the question of what identity is. Faces are always fragmented in the individual images. Only when these are brought together does the "image" of an identity emerge. Identity is permutation and transformation.
Pictures of Money. Since 1997
If we perceive identity, we always perceive images of images of images. In "Pictures of Money," Borower does not paint portraits or other subjects, but only banknotes depicting portraits or other motifs. Influenced by the philosophy of deconstructivism, which encourages people to "read things new and different", Borower has been subjecting banknotes, winelabels and other "images trouvées" to painterly "reading" since 1997. If the pictures are transferred into painting, they are no longer what they were before. Like Duchamp's "objets trouvés", these "images trouvées" receive a new context and are read out anew.
Picture of God. Since 1997
God is the name of identity par excellence. But if we want to describe it, it slips away from us. The project "God" is an artful reflection on the language that reaches its paradigmatic limit in this word, to describe something and not to describe it at the same time. At the same time, it is a reflection on the condition of conceptual art. For the art of the 20th century is the result of an attempt thousands of years ago to represent the unrepresentable. If the unrepresentable was the absolute, vulgo "God", today it is reality itself.
Picture of Time. Death. 2000
Identity is tied to our consciousness of time. But time always slips away from us. Each picture in this series follows the other. The sequence stands for the process of dying. Here, time is not understood as "objective", but as inner, experienced time, which passes more slowly or faster, which can stand still or accelerate. At the same time, the series is a reflection on what painting is.
Pictures of Time: In and Out of Time. Since 2001
Time is identity. Identity is heightened by the increase in complexity. But this thwarts the consistency of identity.
This series comprises 56 oil paintings, which thematize a process of creation and are characterized by increasing complexity. At first, each picture is followed by a different one. All pictures can also be put together in different combinations as a tableau. What used to be chronological is now simultaneous or synchronous. The concept of this series is influenced by the thoughts of the late antique philosopher Boethius. He distinguished two forms of "eternity". An earthly one, which is as it were an infinite way. And a "divine" one, which is the simultaneous and whole possession of infinite life.