About Me
My name is Juan Pablo Bohorquez and my surrealist paintings explore the condition of otherness at the intersection of identity and the unconscious. My experience growing up in a Colombian immigrant family set in an American context is the underpinning in all my work. I engage in this deep exploration of identity by attempting to understand inherited trauma, the immigrant experience of otherness and its transformation to a new awareness and world view. Using tools such as acrylic paints on canvas, charcoal and pencil on paper, digital media and occasionally sculpture I reach into a well of cultural symbolism that I transform and place in a surreal psychological landscape. My work has been greatly informed by Baroque Spanish and Portuguese colonial art, masters such as Goya, Pedro De Mena, Diego Rivera and Orozco to the surrealists De Chirico and Magritte. In the end, upon engaging with my work you will find yourself traversing the surreal landscape of my unconscious where my experience of otherness and identity reside.
I have had the privilege to study at Pratt Institute, FIT and The Arts Students League in New York City. At The League, under the instruction of Michael Grimaldi and Costa Vavagiakis not only did I learn much about technique but also the relationship and philosophy an artist has towards his or her work. Under Grimaldi’s invitation I had the opportunity to study human anatomy at The Drexel University College of Medicine following the dissection of corpses in the tradition of renaissance masters. I have also shown at venues in New York City, South America and sold to several private collections.