Beginning Comes Last
Featuring works by
Alfonse Borysewicz
October 17 – January 11, 2017
To see more images of the exhibition visit our Flickr Gallery.
- Alfonse Borysewicz’ vocation is to find new ways to express an ancient faith. He combines the visual language of abstraction with collage and figurative elements to craft contemporary religious paintings. In his hands, ordinary nests, honeycombs and pregnant mothers are transformed into poetic images of wonder.
Like Renaissance and medieval artists before him, Borysewicz finds inspiration in biblical stories and the rich heritage of Christian art. He uses traditional and found materials on his canvases: oil paint, gold leaf, honeycomb, sheet music, plastic and cardboard. Your Own Soul is a triangular-shaped work with hinged panels, alluding to the form of medieval altarpieces, with abstract images and expressive brush marks.
Three paintings in the show reveal the origins of the artist’s work: Self Portrait, Studio Chair, and Oratory Church of St. Boniface/Chairs with songbooks. They reflect the core preoccupations of his life as well. “What authenticates this work, and keeps me faithful to it, especially in my mature years, is that ‘undertow of mystery’ in the painting itself.”
Kiki McGrath
Curator, Dadian Gallery - The paintings in this exhibit are a cross section from different time periods (mainly the 1990’s to the present), some being a combination of both new and old. Together they serve as book ends, if you will, of the Christian promise. Each painting portrays a segment or a moment from my own meditations on the Gospels and various Christian traditions through the ages. Each work is visually rooted in the gift of creation (hives, bees, leaves, a sparrow, earth, etc.) as they hold the tension between the already and the not yet.
Alfonse Borysewicz, October 2016
- Alfonse Borysewicz was born in Detroit, Michigan where he was raised. He completed his seminary studies there as well with a short stay in Jerusalem. Afterwards he entered the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston. With acclaim he began exhibiting in Boston then New York. In 1995 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting. His work is included in many collections and has been written about extensively. He has been living in Brooklyn, NY for the past thirty years (he also spends significant time in his wife’s hometown of Kyoto, Japan).
- Exhibition Brochure
Alfonse Borysewicz’ vocation is to find new ways to express an ancient faith. He combines the visual language of abstraction with collage and figurative elements to craft contemporary religious paintings. In his hands, ordinary nests, honeycombs and pregnant mothers are transformed into poetic images of wonder.
Like Renaissance and medieval artists before him, Borysewicz finds inspiration in biblical stories and the rich heritage of Christian art. He uses traditional and found materials on his canvases: oil paint, gold leaf, honeycomb, sheet music, plastic and cardboard. Your Own Soul is a triangular-shaped work with hinged panels, alluding to the form of medieval altarpieces, with abstract images and expressive brush marks.
Three paintings in the show reveal the origins of the artist’s work: Self Portrait, Studio Chair, and Oratory Church of St. Boniface/Chairs with songbooks. They reflect the core preoccupations of his life as well. “What authenticates this work, and keeps me faithful to it, especially in my mature years, is that ‘undertow of mystery’ in the painting itself.”
Like Renaissance and medieval artists before him, Borysewicz finds inspiration in biblical stories and the rich heritage of Christian art. He uses traditional and found materials on his canvases: oil paint, gold leaf, honeycomb, sheet music, plastic and cardboard. Your Own Soul is a triangular-shaped work with hinged panels, alluding to the form of medieval altarpieces, with abstract images and expressive brush marks.
Three paintings in the show reveal the origins of the artist’s work: Self Portrait, Studio Chair, and Oratory Church of St. Boniface/Chairs with songbooks. They reflect the core preoccupations of his life as well. “What authenticates this work, and keeps me faithful to it, especially in my mature years, is that ‘undertow of mystery’ in the painting itself.”
Kiki McGrath
Curator, Dadian Gallery
The paintings in this exhibit are a cross section from different time periods (mainly the 1990’s to the present), some being a combination of both new and old. Together they serve as book ends, if you will, of the Christian promise. Each painting portrays a segment or a moment from my own meditations on the Gospels and various Christian traditions through the ages. Each work is visually rooted in the gift of creation (hives, bees, leaves, a sparrow, earth, etc.) as they hold the tension between the already and the not yet.
Alfonse Borysewicz, October 2016
Alfonse Borysewicz was born in Detroit, Michigan where he was raised. He completed his seminary studies there as well with a short stay in Jerusalem. Afterwards he entered the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston. With acclaim he began exhibiting in Boston then New York. In 1995 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting. His work is included in many collections and has been written about extensively. He has been living in Brooklyn, NY for the past thirty years (he also spends significant time in his wife’s hometown of Kyoto, Japan).