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Borofsky Sculpture Enthralls Viewers at Dallas' Nasher Sculpture Center

By Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-466002.mp3

Borofsky Sculpture Enthralls Viewers at Dallas' Nasher Sculpture Center

Dallas, TX –

Museum viewers: It's so uplifting. They're all kind of walking toward something and it's a happy feeling. I think it's fantastic, really, and the kids just love it. It just makes me feel good looking at it.

Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter: Modern art can sometimes confuse people. But visitors to the Nasher Sculpture Center get this work immediately. Seven different figures - young, old, male, female, black, white, some in suits, some casually dressed, stride ahead along a gleaming stainless steel pole. It pierces the sky at a 70 degree angle. Jonathan Borofsky, the 62-year-old sculptor who used to be an abstract painter, says it's all about optimism.

Jonathan Borofsky, sculptor: I'm at a point now where I make works I hope connect people's minds and hearts, goes right to the mind and heart without too much imagination required.

Zeeble: People at the Nasher Sculpture Center yesterday were also connecting with the three sculpted figures on the ground looking up at the walkers.

Museum viewer: There are figures on the ground here that are so realistic in the way they're posed and their attitudes that a fly landed on one figure's pants and I expected him to brush it off. And he didn't.

Borofsky: You'll see five of six people around the pole and one of them moves and the others don't. There's a question of what's reality and what isn't for a moment there.

Zeeble: For art collector Ray Nasher, Jonathan Borofsky's easy juxtaposition of illusion and reality elevates the artist's stature among the world's sculptors. Some say Borofsky's simplistic, but Nasher rejects that, and has collected Borofsky for decades. After he saw this piece last year in New York for its six-week stay, he wanted to get it here.

Ray Nasher, art collector: In the kinetic aspect of things, the movement of them; the figures that are part of the walk to the sky, very complicated. I don't see them as simplistic.

Zeeble: Jonathan Borofsky has been putting sculpted people on skyward polls for about a decade now. But past works featured only single figures. He suspects the inspiration germinated from a childhood memory.

Borofsky: I would sit on my dad's knee at age 6. He would tell me stories of a friendly giant in the sky. He and I would go up together and talk to this friendly giant about things we could do on earth for good. It's an interesting reflection to go back to. Here at age 62, I've created this piece.

Zeeble: Nasher likes it at his Sculpture Center, where it's on loan for 12 months.

Nasher: It can be here forever, just depends. I have option. We'll have to see how the Borofsky fits in. I personally feel it's a great symbol for the Sculpture Center and for Dallas.

Zeeble: You think it'll be here?

Nasher: I think it may (laughs).

Zeeble: For KERA 90.1, I'm Bill Zeeble.

 

Email Bill Zeeble about this story.