| For artists, the natural world is an endless resource library of designs, patterns, textures, color schemes, and subjects. George Boorujy is a modern naturalist: he creates large-scale color ink drawings of arid landscapes, lonely ecosystems, and open terrains populated with vulnerable animals. His drawings explore the raw intersection of humanity and the natural world, under threat from development and invasive species; some record the abuse of the earth or investigate the inevitability of natural chaos and the futile attempts at institutional order; others show nature’s intrusion into our seemingly organized and subdivided existence. |
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Frank Verpoorten is the curator of George Boorujy’s recent exhibition The Nature of Civilization at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art.
For artists, the natural world is an endless resource library of designs, patterns, textures, color schemes, and subjects. George Boorujy is a modern naturalist: he creates large-scale color ink drawings of arid landscapes, lonely ecosystems, and open terrains populated with vulnerable animals. His drawings explore the raw intersection of humanity and the natural world, under threat from development and invasive species; some record the abuse of the earth or investigate the inevitability of natural chaos and the futile attempts at institutional order; others show nature’s intrusion into our seemingly organized and subdivided existence. Boorujy examines new conceptions of the natural sphere occasioned by 21st-century technologies, ideas of destructive ecological engagement, and visions of our future interactions with the environment.
Drawn from the Darwinian perspective of the futility of man against the forces of nature, Boorujy’s drawings traditionally depict animals in desolate biotopes against a white background, a combination that enhances the contrast of nature and vacuum, allowing one to feel the imprint that an infinite landscape makes upon the mind. In some images nature seems to have reclaimed the spaces, while in others settlements become living proof that landscapes cannot completely shake off suburban sprawl.
Boorujy makes a timely and appropriate pictorial comment on our modern circumstance as he uncovers the danger that lies beneath a thin veneer of civilized progress, but also suggests that the orderly and rhythmical qualities of nature contain the same principles of balance that he admires in civilization. Ultimately Boorujy’s work reminds us that human beings have the same instinctual equipment as other animals, and ignoring this fact in the process of civilizing will draw a heavy tax.
Boorujy’s drawings recall the idealized landscapes of 19th-century painting while also reflecting on a distinctly 21st-century passion: the desire to experience life with absolute immediacy on a monumental scale.
