Artist Statement

This work is a revisitation of a well publicized photo from protests after the George Floyd murder in New York. A NYPD vehicle is engulfed in flames, and has been digitally altered as an anaglyph. The 3D effect brings the trauma of the event into the viewer’s space.

I create conceptually driven work comprising sculpture, video, drawing and digital prints. The work reflects upon iconic cultural and societal events or moments that have influenced major shifts in our collective consciousness, but now may be near the point of forgetting.

For each exhibition, I combine and arrange multiple elements and mediums, which invoke visual and cognitive signs, or “clues”, that elicit a (sub)conscious nostalgia, building multiple layers of information to be considered and processed.

Both expressed and implied references to pop culture, social justice, art history and the dark alleys of society, all the while drawing upon lived personal experience, suggest connections and idiosyncrasies while exposing them as uncanny precursors to present-day realities.

The piece I am submitting directly draws upon the reaction to the ongoing racist murder of black people by police, and is direct opposition to the existence of a literal army of white supremisist enforcers supposedly here for our “protection.”

Artist Bio

David Borawski is an independent curator and multi-media installation artist living and working in Hartford, Connecticut. He received his BFA from the Hartford Art School of the University of Hartford.

As a curator, he has been responsible for several of the most recent exhibitions at Real Art Ways in Hartford, and has mounted exhibitions for the Dehn Gallery in Manchester, the Institute Library Gallery in New Haven and others. He also initiated the Atom Space project in the Hartford area, mounting exhibitions in empty storefronts and one-off locations.

His visual artistic practice consists of sculpture, video, drawing and digital prints. Conceptually driven, the work reflects upon pop culture, social justice politics, art history and the dark alleys of society while drawing upon lived personal experience.

Recent solo installations include the New Britain Museum of American Art, Five Points Gallery, Real Art Ways and EBK Gallery, and group exhibitions at Galleria Foksal in Warsaw; Center for Contemporary Political Art, Washington, D.C.; Odetta Gallery, New York; Artspace New Haven; work-detroit; Spring Break Art Fair, New York and the Water Tower Arts Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria. More at @davborski.