About Boris
Boris Oicherman
I am an artist, curator, administrator, engineer... I always had a hard time responding to the "what do you do" questions. What's your field of engineering? (Color Science...?) What art medium? (Conditional art...?) What do you curate? (Creative collaborations..?) Answering a "simple" question with a conversation seemed the only way. It took me some years to realize that what I'm having hard time with is the very idea of disciplines, media, professions, the ways we segregate our work, lives, cultures and ways of knowing. I also had a hunch that, of all professions, artists are the ones who can attach themselves to any other practice, absorb themselves into any other profession. The reverse is also true: any work can become art when it sparks an imagination of a better world. So, I thought, this incredible freedom of artists can catalyze connections between disciplines, institutions, cultures and sectors, and perhaps—one day—do away with those segregations altogether. Whatever my job title is, I’m an artist, and this is the work I do.
But freedoms always come with responsibilities. Artist Robert Irwin pointed out, some 50 years ago, "One interesting thing about being an artist now is that everything is a possibility. Which means you start out of the state of total chaos, and you have to assume the responsibility for every single thing you do or do not do."
