Drawing Bodies and Passions of the Soul

Twenty-one collages by Dmitry Borshch will be shown next month at the Fine Arts Hall in Bratislava, Slovakia. His fourth show there, “Drawing Bodies and Passions of the Soul” is about how Dmitry’s fragmentary compositions or, as he sometimes calls them, body-part images relate to drawing manuals that were printed in seventeenth-eighteenth-century Europe. “I didn’t learn to draw from those manuals – my first independent series of drawings was abstract and influenced by Constructivism – but they had an influence on collages I make now: Odoardo Fialetti’s Il vero modo et ordine per dissegnar tutte le parti et membra del corpo humano, De excellentia et nobilitate delineationis libri duo, Artis Apellae liber, Scuola perfetta per imparare a disegnare tutto il corpo humano, Stefano della Bella’s I principii del disegno, Neu-vollständiges Reiß-Buch, Pieter de Jode’s Varie figure academiche, ‘t Licht der teken en schilderkonst, Die durch Theorie erfundene Practic, Jahn’s Zeichenbuch für Künstler und Liebhaber der freyen Handzeichnung, Luca Ciamberlano’s Fondamento del latre de desegnia, Remondini’s Prima elementa picturae, Charles-Antoine Jombert’s Nouvelle methode pour apprendre a dessiner sans maître, and others like Charles Le Brun’s Expressions des passions de l’âme (not entirely a drawing manual) which is referred to in the title of this show,” explained Borshch, saying further, “Detached from religious, philosophical controversies of that time, by which these manuals were influenced, and art pedagogy then fashionable, my collages help me to essentialize their subjects, bare the not-readily-understood way they act through depiction of meaningful, striking gestures and vivid expressions.”

Fine Arts Hall has been inviting artists and curators to mount exhibitions in the Slovak capital since 2009. Its activities have been supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovakia, Comenius University, Academies of Performing Arts and Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. Dmitry’s exhibition is mounted with the support of Bratislava Department of Cultural Affairs.

He was born in Dnipropetrovsk, studied in Moscow, today lives in New York, Dnipro, and Ramat Gan. His works have been exhibited at Russian American Cultural Center (New York), HIAS (New York), Consulate General of the Russian Federation (New York), Lydia Schukina Institute of Psychology (Moscow), Contemporary Art Centers (Voronezh, Almaty), Museums of Contemporary Art (Poltava, Lviv). More exhibitions can be found in the Brooklyn Arts Council registry: http://archive.is/ClMDa

The artist has collaborated with Russian American Cultural Center for more than 10 years. It was founded in 1998 by Dr. Regina Khidekel and earned its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status in 1999. RACC aims to provide permanent cultural representation to more than 700,000 Russian-speaking residents of New York.

“Drawing Bodies and Passions of the Soul”
Jakubovo námestie 2559 / 6, Bratislava, Slovakia 811 09

September 1, 11 am – September 26, 7 pm
Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 7 pm, free admission

Please write to [email protected] or call (347) 662 1456  
The artist is available for interviews