Although a Colorado native, Borchert grew up in Texas and earned his BFA at the University of North Texas in Denton. He's recently returned to Denver, and he good-naturedly recalls that his efforts were not well received by his Texas art teachers, one of whom called him a "high school superstar." Ouch! Surely part of the problem was Borchert's interest in employing non-art techniques, notably airbrush painting. "Airbrush is tough because it has so much baggage," he says. And though he doesn't say why that's true, we all know anyway: painted vans.
As interesting as his technique is -- and he is incredibly adept technically -- it's his organizational program that's most intriguing. Borchert has developed a set of images that correspond to a set of numbers. The images fall into four categories: "sex, death, food and art history." (Hey, isn't that a Swedish movie from the '60s?) The numbers, 1 through 53, are those generated by the Powerball lottery. By associating the images with the numbers, Borchert comes up with pseudo-narrative paintings. For these Warholian acrylics on paper, he simply creates straightforward renditions of the selected images, such as the time bomb depicted in "48" (right).
Borchert is an exciting new addition to the local scene, and it's great that Capsule has given him this smart little solo, which runs through December 4.
