Alfonse Borysewicz
Alfonse Borysewicz is a Brooklyn-based painter. He received his B.A. from Sacred Heart Seminary and M.A. from St. John’s Provincial Seminary. He later attended the Studio School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He is the recipient of two fellowships from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Gregory Wolfe, an editor at Image, calls Borysewicz "one of the most important religious artists since the French Catholic Georges Rouault.”
Works
Borysewicz describes the work of his seminary years as “garish––sort of Otto Dix meets Marc Chagall.” After seminary, where he was taught and mentored by Edgar Yaeger, Borysewicz moved to Boston where he was, in his words, “exhibiting neo-expressionist, angst ridden paintings.” The works from this period are on un-stretched canvas and covered with a mixture of paint, mud, sand, leaves and in some cases crayon and gold leaf. More than one critic has noted the influence of Cy Twombly, and one reviewer in particular, parallels with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Many of these early works include animals, but the scenes are rarely pastoral. In fact, they have been described as “an imagined hell of grotesque beasts.” Significant works from this period include Cow, Encyclical and The Passion, all of which were included in the 1984 exhibition, "Emerging Massachusetts Painters," at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.According to Joseph Masheck, formerly Editor-in-chief of Artforum, "Borysewicz is essentially an abstract painter, but on behalf of a religious thematic his works have long been able to accommodate iconographic signs. At the same time, as one who has executed an altarpiece and a processional cross for the Brooklyn Oratory, Borysewicz has always struck me as the contemporary painter best attuned to the Byzantine, and then Orthodox, icon as a highly abstract image capable of tendering a spiritual, even devotional, stance in virtue of its highly stylized semiotic."
Lectios
Describing these works, Robert Lue writes: "Often rough like the early banners, the Lectio works differed in that they appeared to be made from the remnants of some glorious icon.... Borysewicz literally strives to recreate meaning by bringing together splinters of sacred imagery with the basic wood and metal of our physical domain. Both tragic and gracefully matter-of-fact, they represent an honest coming to terms with the bankruptcy of the transcendent referent." This theme of retrieval is consistent with Borysewicz's paintings and works on paper that often feature collaged pieces of pages from icon books.Collections
- Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Trappist, KY
- Corpus Christi Church, New York, NY
- DeCordova Sculpture Park & Museum, Lincoln, MA
- General Electric
- Grand Rapids Theological Seminary of Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids, MI
- Iglesia de San Jose, Esmeralda, Cama guess, Cuba
- Manressa Retreat Center, Dublin, Ireland
- Pontifical Council for Culture, Vatican
- Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
- St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY
Reviews
- David Joselit, “Alfonse Borysewicz,” Currents, n.1, n.p.
- Thomas Frick, “Alfonse Borysewicz at Stavarides,” Art in America, 154.
- Joseph Masheck, “Alfonse Borysewicz,” Tema Celeste, n.p.
- Linda Yablonsky, “Alphonse Borysewicz: Yoshii Gallery,”, 86.
- Steve Mumford, “Alphonse Borysewicz: Richard Anderson Gallery through January 30,” Review: The Critical State of Visual Art in New York, 10–11.
- Sarah Schmerler, “Alfonse Borysewicz: Richard Anderson Fine Arts, through Jan 30,” Time Out: New York, n.174, 55.
- Jonathan Goodman, “Alfonse Borysewicz at Richard Anderson,” Art in America, 151.