Djawid Borower

ABOUT THE ARTIST

 

Translated from Greek, the term Palimpsest refers to something re-used or altered while still bearing traces of its early form. Manifesting his work as a painter, poet and author, Borower's new work points to successive layerings of image and text. Each of these works forms an image suggestive of the Earth, an image literally "unearthed" through his process of layering oil paint onto the canvas, scraping deliberately at the surface with a palette knife before covering and hiding that image with another layer of paint which obliterates all other layers. Through this process the artist makes visible the incomplete history of his actions.

Authored by the artist, the text is hand-written into and around the painting, acting as philosophical thoughts that frame the paintings – commentary that inflect the way the viewer looks at and interprets the work. 

 

Djawid C. Borower studied both history and philosophy at the universities of Cologne and Vienna, and has written a body of dramatic work, that has been performed on international stages. In 1992 he began writing for the feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, leaving in 1999, when he began transferring text into visual art and combining it with a multitude of figurative elements.

 

Over the years he has established his art in the here and now: revolving around God and Mammon, Time and Death, language and image. Thus addressing the forces that make the world go round.