From the drawing table ...
Lionel Borla was born on August 3, 1974 in Menton, a few kilometers from Italy, the land of his ancestors. Fascinated by the beauty of the world, art seemed to him to be his calm kingdom.
Imagine, draw, paint, paint again, draw and paint every day, constantly. Being free and lonely in a small workshop - the studio - in front of the paper space, it is always a feeling of fullness and absolute for Lionel Borla.
Meanwhile, the painter has been on the path of music (5 years of piano) and architecture (6 years at the Ecole Supérieure Nationale d'Architecture de Marseille). Organizing reflection, unifying the ramifications of imagination, putting order into the « chatter of the mind » that is imagination, this is the method. Thus began the intellectual path that built the works.
While studying architecture, Lionel Borla discovered the close links between architecture, painting, sculpture and music. Synthesis of the Arts! That of Greek antiquity, the Renaissance, Modernity. With architectural drawing, Lionel Borla understood that the two dimensions of painting and drawing would be sufficient for his fulfillment and that he could enjoy an immense, if not total freedom of action and creation.
Painting thus appeared to him as the place where he would develop spiritually. He always quotes André Malraux to express this idea: "The main thing is not to be king, but to find your kingdom". With the paint, he found it ! As a matter of course, creating daily a graphic vocabulary on two-dimensional space became a vital need. He is delighted to be the constant partner of this world of signs. He therefore decided to devote himself fully to this art at the end of 1999.
In July 1998, by a working day, a silhouette arrived on paper. A silhouette sign that, quickly, moved and inhabited the spaces created on paper, laminated cardboard, wood or canvas. Traces of ink, acrylic and various figurative elements would accompany this character who is more the « representation » of the human spirit than that of the human body. A kind of ideogram. This stable and stylized silhouette travels across the plane-spaces. Sleek figurations thus dialogue with this recurring graphic entity in all the works. The line, the right angle, the square and the flat colors are the formal tools that magnify the graphics. It is thus a graphic sign to which I give a universal dimension of the human spirit, a graphic sign symbolizing the pure spirit.
The silhouette and other stylized signs are presented in compositions where geometry structures space. The notions of rhythm and composition are fundamental in the graphic design created. The rhythm presents the idea of a rigorous graphic construction where chance has little space. The graphic writing worked with a pen, brush or ApplePencil, brings a certain lyricism and poetry to this solid structure that is the rhythmic composition of space.
Silhouette signs inhabit these uncluttered spaces. The atmosphere that these graphic landscapes create is above all that of a silent world. The warm tones of brown, grey, red chalk, white and black bring this notion of necessary silence. A small architecture, a parasol pine tree, a crescent moon, a chaise longue, a piano, a tree-sign, a sun sign, so many figurative elements that interact graphically with these serene silhouettes. A « dolce vita graphical » in a way !
Painting is a singular writing, a language that is both personal in its creation and universal in its communication. In other words, a world of signs to share. These are graphic signs that present sensitive images to the viewer's eyes. Sensitive images of peaceful and silent landscapes. His desire is above all to present a world that has become simple again, where the essential, the immutable is necessary and sufficient. To rediscover this state of original nature from which Man too often turns away.
Lionel Borla has exhibited his works in New York, Barcelona, Shanghai, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Metz, Mulhouse, Nice, Aix en Provence, Toulon, Marseille …
Lionel Borla's works therefore have as their primary ambition to present a moment of aesthetic and graphic serenity conducive to silent journeys of the mind.