BORBAY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, NY - June 16, 2010 – New York Location Artist, Jason Borbay’s recreation of the Figure Five in Gold will be auctioned tomorrow evening, June 17, 2010,  at the A.C.E. Black & White Ball, celebrating Henry Buhl’s 80th Birthday.

About A.C.E.

One summer morning in 1992, philanthropist and art collector Henry Buhl was leaving his loft on Greene Street in SoHo when a local homeless man approached him for twenty dollars. Instead, Henry offered the man a job sweeping the front of his building, then rallied the other businesses and buildings on his block to pay the man to clean their storefronts as well. Within months, the street cleaning operation had grown exponentially and the SoHo Partnership was born.

Now known as A.C.E. (The Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless), Henry’s organization keeps the streets and sidewalks of SoHo, TriBeCa, Nolita and NoHo/Bowery clean and beautiful and, more importantly, enables recovering homeless men and women from all over New York City to successfully transition into full-time employment and long-term economic self-sufficiency.

The Figure Five Artist Perspective

My Figure Five in Gold is a faithful recreation of the original Figure Five in Gold, a Futurist masterpiece by Charles Demuth. Demuth’s picture resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art – mine is now available for your private collection. From the first moment I gazed upon Demuth’s mesmerizing work, it represented the essence of Manhattan flawlessly. Thus, I set out to truthfully recreate his opus based on a series of photographs and sketches I created while standing in front of the original. Demuth’s work is the visual representation of a poem by William Carlos Williams, “The Great Figure”, about a Number Five fire truck barreling down 14^th street in the rain.

My Figure Five in Gold is done on canvas in acrylic, versus Demuth’s original, which is oil on cardboard. His image pays homage to Williams with the inscription of “Bill” in the top left of the canvas, “Carlos” on the brown building in the background, and “W.C.W.” at the lower center of the picture. Shifting the gratitude, I changed  “Bill” to “Chaz” for Charles Demuth, “Carlos” to “Leavy” (my former roommate and artist Patrick Leavy), and “W.C.W.” to “C.D.” Created in 2006, this work is 36”X48”, and has been in my private collection since its creation.

Event Details
To purchase a table, please contact Gala coordinator Melissa Robinson at (212) 274-0550, extension 15, or email mrobinson@ace4homeless.org

To make a pledge or pay by check, please download, print and fax the
ACE gala pledge form to (646) 613-8276 or mail to:

Melissa Robinson at ACE New York
598 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10012