Jaap Borgers (Netherlands 1947) was educated in the 60’s and 70’s as a painter, sculptor and glasblower at the Art Academy in Utrecht and the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, with gueststudies in Denmark and England. He has had exhibitions with a variety of works in Holland, France, Germany and Finland. Originally his work was based on traditional Dutch neo-realism and craftmanship.
During his studies at the Rietveld he specialised in making portraits, built a bronze-foundry and made his own tools for carving wood and stone. He was an apprentice at a restoration studio and restored woodcarvings in the parliamentbuildings in The Hague. He also assisted stonecarvers and an ornamental smith. His free sculptural work was mainly abstract, but later it became realistic and more related to his former paintings. Lately his work has become more conceptual.
Besides his work as an artist he has been involved with teaching portraitmodelling, managing a cultural centre, doing theatre-lighting and set up a theatre. He organizes for over fifteen years now the art-manifestation SchoK in wich yearly over a hundred professional artists of all disciplines participate. Here he also has a platform to make installations/performances in coöperation with other artists.
After Borgers met his wife, Finnish ceramist Pike Räsänen, he lived and worked partly in Finland for over ten years. Here he got in touch with the Japanese firing method ‘Raku’. This finally resulted in sculptures constructed with thin Raku fired clay-slabs. In these Raku-works he integrates imprints of -previously made- portraits, of which a fleeting image stays behind.
At the moment he combines this way of working in clay, with parts of old, rusty iron. He also combines drawings with partly deteriorated materials and makes installations. He has exhibited in various Europian countries and is active as a boardmember for several intenational artist organisations.