Global VillageYear 6!Number 288!8 pagesThe News friday june 5, 2015 MEXICO CITY

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Australians and New Zealanders remember fallen heroes PAGE: 2

Highest reality Page: 4

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The News 4 >friday june 5, 2015

The News5>friday june 5, 2015

BY DEVON VAN HOUTEN MALDONADOThe News

For inspiration, Mexi-can hyperrealist painter Christian Borbolla draws from both the past and

the present, to augment reality through compositions that awaken the spirit.

Borbolla creates intricate and expres-sively detailed canvases from live models and a finely tuned language of symbol-ism. The News caught up with him in his Condesa studio.

“Hyperrealism is about taking reali-ty to its highest expression,” Borbolla said.

“The most important characteristic is developing the detail, developing every part of the canvas.”

Hyperrealism came out of photo-realism, which, as the name suggests, sought to elevate painting to the level of a photograph.

Photorealism developed during the second half of the 20th century as a re-action to modernism and conceptualism, which stripped classicism of its formality, layer by layer.

Hyperrealism seeks to go beyond pho-torealism, to be even more precise than a photograph, emphasizing details that the camera fails to capture.

Hyperrealists like Borbolla even in-vent details in order to make their sub-jects more luscious.

Hyperrealism is delicious for the eyes. “Reality is a vehicle of expression,”

Borbolla said. “I start to input elements in the work

that have to do with my style and the whole story I want to tell. It obligates the spectator to fixate on what I want them to fixate on.”

Borbolla takes the “hyper” part of hy-perrealism to a new level, adding an ex-tra element.

Rather than working purely from single photographs, he creates composi-tions using iconography and symbolism to compose spiritual narratives.

Rather than abstract reality, the paint-er uses reality to make subtle suggestions toward higher concepts than can be allud-ed in photographs.

One of the enduring qualities in Borbolla’s w o r k

is that it’s disconnected from the limited dialogue that exists within the formal art world.

He is a self-taught artist who was sure about what he wanted to do with his life.

Without the requirements of the con-temporary art world weighing him down, he said he is free to express whichever ideas suit him.

“I was never interested in studying art in a formal way.” Borbolla said.

“But I looked for the best teachers in the different mediums, so that I could master them myself. Since childhood, I knew I was going to be a painter. My par-ents always took me to museums and told me about art history. It was very easy to choose my career.”

After 20 years as a painter, Borbolla said he now has the technical ability to compose whatever he chooses.

The narratives in his work are cen-tered around spirituality and ancient mysticism.

Using “all of the most ancient spiritu-ality that is the basis for religion today,” he said he creates a hybrid, democratic spirituality.

“I manage an iconography,” Borbol-la said.

“The personality that appears in the work is what unites all of the symbolism. The basis for all of my compositions is sacred geometry. All of the proportions and the placement of the elements is all planned out.”

Borbolla has gathered much of his in-spiration from traveling and living around the world.

After growing up in Oaxaca, he lived in the United States, Spain and France be-fore settling in Mexico City almost four years ago.

The narrative of his paintings has de-veloped to reflect his experiences, he said.

“In the end, I think it is important to leave your own fingerprints behind,” Borbolla said.

“There are so many paintings in the world and people will continue to make paintings. What has value is your individ-ual story.”

Borbolla said that in straight hyperre-alism, there is a lot of work and beauty, but not much personal expression.

“I like to pull various symbols from different sources to create my own sto-ry,” he said.

The symbolism that Borbolla us-es calls on the plethora of information available today and also the technique of appropriation.

Even though he is using the most clas-sical tools, oil paint and brushes, and an-cient symbolism, the painter creates im-ages that are securely situated in today’s society.

One of the paintings in his studio is a portrait of Mexico City Mayor Miguel Án-gel Mancera.

The painting is layered with symbol-ism derived from an incident that oc-curred when Mancera was Mexico City attorney general, when he personally dealt with a hostage situation that result-ed in 52 children being released, Borbol-la said.

However, it isn’t a portrait of Mancera as a hero.

Rather, the painting portrays him in dramatic lighting with a wry smile on his face, as if the controversial mayor hovers between light and dark.

The symbolism isn’t apparent at first – you have to look for it, etched into the background of the portrait.

But on closer investigation, the paint-ing reveals itself.

Borbolla said he strives to express a conceptual profundity within the beau-ty and labor of his technique.

His paintings conceal countless hours of patient, meditative work.

There is something almost sadistic about hyperrealism, in today’s world of mass production, he said.

The meditative nature of Borbolla’s work sometimes seems to give rise to subconscious ideas that materialize on the canvas.

“The meditation of working, gives me an inner tranquility,” Borbolla said.

“For two years, I have been putting walls in the background of all my paint-ings, but all the walls have cracks. I sup-pose it represents the passage of time and change. But I was back in Oaxaca and I no-ticed that the majority of the downtown buildings have these adobe walls that are cracked from time. So, that’s where it

came from, my childhood.”

Global Culture

Christian Borbolla

MORE INFO

Christian Borbolla’s paintings can be seen at the Alberto Misrachi Gallery in Mexico City, located at Campos Elíseos 215, local E, in Colonia Polanco and at the Corsica Gallery in Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos.

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