“Every artist's work is their self-portrait. Some of those self-portraits are more abstract than others. Because I'm an ongoing work myself, my artwork becomes kind of a record, an ongoing portrait of my life.”
Jonathan Borofsky
(b. Boston, MA, 1942)
Jonathan Borofsky’s Hammering Men series began in 1979 and became one of his best-known bodies of work with major installations in Seoul, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Basel, Seattle, and here in Dallas. Jonathan states, “My original concept was to have many Hammering Men, all hammering at different locations around the world – all at the same time – a worldwide installation connecting us all together.” As a silhouette, the figure is anonymous. This allows him to serve as a global symbol — a champion of all working classes and a celebration of their accomplishments.
When he was 25 years old, Borofsky started counting for three hours a day, meticulously writing numbers in his sketchbook, convinced that this meditative process would reveal an underlying truth about the human spirit. He eventually began signing his works with numbers instead of his name, as seen on the Five Hammering Men series.
The artist has had major one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1978); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (1981); Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1981); Kunstmuseum Basel (1983); Whitney Museum of American Art (1983); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1984); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1986); Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (1987); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2001); and the Carnegie-Museum, Pittsburgh (2006), amongst others. Borofsky taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1969-1977 and at California Institute for the Arts from 1977-1980. Since 1995, the artist has focused primarily on creating large public sculptures in cities around the world, including Seoul, Seattle, Dallas, Los Angeles, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Kassel, and Strasbourg. In 2008, he created the 64-foot-tall People Tower for the Beijing Olympics. Borofsky lives and works in Ogunquit, Maine.
