JONATHAN FERRARA GALLERY is pleased to present Other Living Things featuring new works by artist BRIAN BORRELLO in his first solo exhibition with the gallery. As a native New Orleanian, Borrello was deeply impacted by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The work exhibited in Other Living Things explores the delicate balance between human advancement and ecological stability. The exhibition runs from September 30th, 2010 through October 30th, 2010 with an opening reception on Saturday October 2nd from 6 to 9pm in conjunction with the CAC’s Art for Arts’ Sake.
Of the works to be exhibited, Borrello says:
I am a visual artist and designer, creating in a broad array of sculptural and graphic techniques. I generate objects, images, and public art pieces, and works in a range of conceptual approaches. I am particularly interested in creating awareness of human life in balance with other life forms and our shared environment. In my art for the public realm, I seize opportunities to make 'places' by activating urban spaces through image, form and symbol, and in response to local history and context.
In my graphic work, I offer meditations on the delicate interrelationship that humans and other life forms share on this planet. Often these images are rendered in carbon-based materials, like charcoal, India ink, or oil, to reflect the carboniferous origins of life on earth. Like diagrams for life processes, the botanical drawings and paintings are expressed in the forming and becoming of plant forms, yet also are in fragmentation or decay. The landscape pieces are impressions of ecosystems, marked by the influence of human industry and activity and also document the temporal nature of life on earth.
-Brian Borrello, 2010
BRIAN BORRELLO received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship award (1990), and his work was featured in the Portland Art Museum's 2001 Oregon Biennial.
The artist received a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University, with post-graduate course work in architectural engineering. He is adept at several fabrication skills, such as welding, metal casting, and neon glassblowing, and maintain a production studio in north Portland, Oregon. Further, he is the principal of Neonjones, a neon and LED lighting design and fabrication facility. His work is represented in galleries in Portland, Oregon and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Since 2004, Borrello has been engaged as an artist/facilitator by the US Army Corps of Engineers, as part of their Brownfields Initiative Program, conducting vision-planning sessions with Brownfield communities nationwide. He is the co-creator of the 'Multi-Vision Integration/ Vision to Action Tool," used in public meetings to assist Brownfields communities to envision, render, and implement sustainable solutions.
Brian Borrello’s work is included in such notable collections at the Portland Art Museum, The Ogden Collection of Southern Art, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, the Audubon Zoological Institute, Proctor & Gamble, Adams and Reese law firm, the Four Seasons, and many others.