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babble
At a cultural moment of animal art ubiquity, with naturalists' drawings practically a uniform hipster accessory, George Boorujy's paintings hit like a jolt of electricity.
The animals he draws -- often larger-than-life, in hyperrealistic detail -- don't rest on the page in idealized repose. They stare back at viewers as if in confrontation, demanding to be recognized as more than anonymous species ideals.
Sometimes they seem majestic. At other times they look damaged. Often they're both. Though Boorujy's thematic tradition dates to the natural compendia of past centuries, his vision is shaped by the state of nature in the 21st century: intertwined with human landscapes, insulted but resilient, gloriously alive and often overlooked.
"You don't need to go to Borneo or Papua New Guinea to see an amazing bird," said Boorujy. "Go here. This is an environment. This is an ecosystem. This is something. Let's look at what's here, at the things we've seen already a thousand times, but really look at them."
Boorujy's new exhibition, Blood Memory, opened March 15 at the PPOW gallery in New York City. It runs through April 14. For readers who can't visit the exhibition in person, Wired takes a digital tour on the following pages.
Above:
Babble
2011, ink on paper, 38 x 50 inches "It's a very centralized composition. I wanted that in all these pieces. I want you to be able to get lost in the detail, and zone out into this meditative space," said Boorujy. "That's one reason I do them so detailed. If someone looks at a huge photograph of something, they think, 'That's cool,' and move on to something else. We're so visually sophisticated at this point that we recognize 'photograph' immediately. We process it so much quicker, because we're bombarded by photographs. If you see something that's photographic, but made by hand, you slow down. I want people to slow down."All images: George Boorujy
