BOROS OPENS TO THE PUBLIC HIS CONTEMPORARY ART COLLECTION

translated by Giorgina Arcuri

Recently, in German cities, a new architectonic trend has started to spread, a trend that tries to modify existing buildings not in their space or aspect, but in their use. Indeed, Berlin has recently experienced a similar operation regarding a bunker. Built in 1942 for the German railway company, it was supposed to protect from air raids travellers arriving from Friedrichstrasse Station. At the end of the war, Soviets used it for a short period as a prison before handing it to the authorities of East Germany, which showed a certain creativity by using it as a store for tropical fruit. From 1992 the Nazi bunker took on a new image, becoming the “hardest club in the world”, centre of a techno-fetish and fantasy scene. Subsequently, it became a sort of avant-garde art centre, giving space to stage shows and temporary exhibitions.
Currently, the “bananabunker” (as Berliners define it) is about to face another change: as from June it will house the contemporary art collection of a renowned adman with the passion for art. If you were thinking of Charles Saatchi you were wrong, as actually we are referring to Christian Boros, German with Polish origins, who immediately fell in love with the huge parallelepiped of grey cement, which is thirty-eight metres long and sixteen metres high, almost without windows. Boros acquired it in 2003 and restructured its interior, leaving the external walls unaltered, where you can still see the signs of the war from over sixty years ago. 
After all these years, the 120 rooms of this massive building – which is also Boros’s residence – will house for now about eighty works of about fifty-seven celebrities of contemporary art. Besides being the founder of an advertising firm in Wuppertal, which among its clients boasts Coca-Cola, Siemens and small galleries, Christian Boros has always cultivated a passion for contemporary art, collecting portraits, paintings, videos and sculptures. When he finished his studies, at the age of 18, Boros started using his parents’ money to buy works of art. His first purchase (but also his first sale) was a painting by German artist Joseph Beuys, and after about twenty years, his collection continues growing.
During the nineties, the German adman starting collecting works by German photographer Wolfgang Tillmanns, who until then had received little consideration by the artistic-economic world. Afterwards Boros starting directing his attention at the YBAs (Young British Artists) such as Sarah  Lucas and Damien Hirst, to then go on to works by sculptor Olafur Eliasson, but also Anselm Reyle and Santiago Serra.

Web: www.sammlung-boros.de