Borčić created the “Doors” cycles across different periods of his working life. Early on, there is “Red Door” (1963, 145 x 90 cm, oil on canvas, privately owned). In it, we see a plate with fish and bones painted in the centre of a red background. The title “Door”, like other Borčić titles, should not be understood literally, but in a descriptive and visual sense, as a limited surface with certain proportions and signs of wear and tear. However, the symbolic meaning of doors, for example the mythological transition from earthly life to the afterlife, cannot be completely denied. The painting “Blue Door” belongs to Borčić’s postmodernism. In this period the surface of the painting becomes a background, from which the paint initially stands out as a relief, and later various objects are attached to it, which may have a compositional as well as symbolic role: chains, locks, boards, handles and other things. In the painting “Blue Door” (B 2008/27), he completed the chain with a modest wooden replica of a metal lock. The constant and pointed ambivalence of signs in his paintings is evidence of the artist’s vast knowledge of the ontological problems in art, and the continuous process of exploring the limitations of painting, which continues all the way up to his final works, created in 2013.

Text: Jernej Kožar