Borf

The Outsiders Newcastle invite you to join us on the evening of Thursday 23rd August at the opening party for ‘Walls Are Two-Sided‘, the new solo exhibition by young American artist BORF. The event takes place from 6 ’til 9pm in the gallery at 77 Quayside, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The most critically lauded young talent in urban art, BORF (AKA John Tsombikos) returns to The Outsiders Newcastle gallery. An exhibition exploring conflict, serenity and contradiction, Walls are Two-Sided features ten large canvases. All feature the artist’s charm, sensitivity and humour underlaid with yearning idealism and quiet but passionate anger. Five of the paintings are detailed close-ups of derelict houses in the artist’s resident town of Detroit, and a further five feature “old school” graffiti overlaid with colour fields in the style of late abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko.

“Rothko talked about wrestling with opposing and competing elements to eventually discover an equilibrium, what he called a pocket of silence” says BORF. “For this show I was fighting through layers of ambivalence and opposites: graffiti as youth expression and Rothko as adult expression; the art market and property rights; education and improvisation, youth and adulthood.”