Jonathan Borofsky

American, born 1942

BiographyAn installation artist, Jonathan Borofsky has made his reputation with bold, aggressive, diaristic and frequently playful works with underlying philosophical seriousness. In an interview that he gave in 1993, Borofsky said "I like the word spiritual because I don't really know what it means, but I do believe it applies to finding your connection to the All. I've always felt that my search, whether I had a particularly chaotic work or a particularly simple one, has been a way to feel connected to the Whole."

At his retrospective exhibition at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary, work he completed as a youngster was placed on pedestals, and his dreams were literally written on the walls. Handwritten pages from notebooks were casually push-pinned in place.

In recent years Borofsky concentrated his energies on one concept at a time. In one instance, his art consisted of his counting and writing numbers down for hours on end--an obsessional marking of time. In all of these earlier and later works, movement, sound and repetition have been essential elements.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and in 1964 earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University. He also studied at the Ecole de Fontainebleau in Paris and earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Yale University. Primarily a working artist, he also also been a teacher including at the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1969 to 1977 and at the California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles from 1977 to 1980.

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