After two years of work, Spanish artist Gonzalo Borondo recently finished, an intervention in the funeral chapel of the Selci cemetery, in Italy for the art residency Pubblica.
About The Project
The new and fascinating body of work by Borondo is the result of his 2-year art residency in the Selci cemetery. Entitled “Cenere” (“Ash” in Italian), the intervention has been presented in an intimate way. Borondo requested to keep the funeral home at the cemetery open at night for the public to have an unusual experience, where a bus would bring the spectators on a journey to the unknown destination. Once in Selci, people would free to get lost inside the cemetery, and to arrive to the chapel that hosts the artist’s permanent intervention.
The spectators could thus appreciate the work of the artist, a painting series which fit perfectly to the sacredness of the chapel. The artist has accepted this work being aware of the great difficulty and the responsibility of working inside a sacred place. Elena Nicolini and Carlo Vignapiano asked him to intervene in the chapel and he accepted and was moved by the desire to measure himself against such a meaningful space, universal and close to him.
“I’ve always been attracted to cemeteries, I know it sounds weird but they arouse a sense of stillness in me. I try to recover myself and to understand what is around me in the silence of their walls”, Said Borondo.
Borondo’s work is not related to religion and a God, but to man and his own limits and the ancestral wish to understand them.
About The Artist
Gonzalo Borondo was born in Spain 1989. He grew up in Segovia, and at a very young age he used to paint the hallways of their house. In 2003 he moves to Madrid where he strengthens his relationship with Graffiti and the street becomes the place of expression. After he starts visiting the studio of his “master” Jose Garcia Herranz, he discovers the pleasures of experimenting with different techniques and exploring the old masters of painting. In 2010 he was invited for the first time to a public art festival in Istanbul and started to deal with large scale wall surfaces. Since then he has made numerous public interventions around the world. Since 2012 he has been exhibiting projects in galleries and museums all over Europe, where he expresses himself through paintings and multimedia installations. In 2015 Borondo inaugurated “Animal”, his solo exhibition entirely realized in London, which unveiled a large body of work, mixed with different media and techniques.
Images by the Blind Eye Factory.
