The Eye of the Butterfly | Solo Show by Steve Borton

What we see cannot always be believed; limited by the physical aspect of light affecting our optical nerves, and how our brain is conditioned to see, optical illusions occur in the process of our biological system for sight. In his body of work (drawings and sculptures), Steve Borton plays with perception in order to point out visual assumptions.

The creation of perspective and depth in art inherently involves illusions; varying size to have larger objects appear closer, converging lines to create distance, or light and shadow to create shape and depth. Borton plays on these geometric forms to visually represent a screen for real emotions and events.

The many faceted Eye of the Butterfly combines Borton?s love of optical illusion with the internal trauma of human loss and inherent change. He explores his own psychological motivations behind creating clean, abstract geometric forms and compositions, expanding from analyzing visual perception to analyzing his perception of himself. The resulting art documents a man?s memory of bereavement towards Acceptance through Anger, Addiction and Obsession.

A Coke bottle wall and doorway mark the threshold of the dark and playful conceptualism found throughout the show. Crutch a visual pun is sculpted with the artists discarded cigarette packs, a distraction from acknowledging feeling. Masks of vulnerability mingle with Borton’s self-described John Wayne syndrome capitulated in the collage of his extensive nude stamp collection.

Preserved butterflies grace the exhibition space and artworks, a symbolic and manic means of isolating the shared passions of father and son entomologists. A man made of deer bones savagely beats butterflies in his assemblage, Butterfly Catcher. Like the chrysalis, Borton struggles through the repetition of memories into metamorphosis with a new and more informed aesthetic body of work.