In his work Bocca Baciata Alexander Tovborg focuses on dinosaurs to spin a mythological visual narrative about the artistic process of creation. The myth positions the dinosaur in the context of Holbæk while simultaneously drawing on elements from folk-tales. The artist meets a dinosaur and falls in love while visiting the hundred sacred springs surrounding the town. The dinosaur calls the artist by name, kissing him several times as he bathes naked in the spring, before going to Ahlgade and painting his work in “a second.”
The dinosaur is part of a larger, semi-abstract motif and is depicted twice, the two images overlapping one another. The figures are not distinct from the background, blending in with heaven/earth, mountains and stars in a strongly colored ornamental pattern.The rainbow that traditionally bridges the worlds of men and gods constitutes the dinosaur’s back and a portal: symbolizing a rite or transition similar to the baptism or cleansing undergone by the artist prior to creating the work. The fact that the artist accepts the creative force though a kiss is emphasized by the title of the work in reference to a saying from Boccacio’s Renaissance work Decameron: “The mouth that has been kissed does not lose its good fortune: rather, it renews itself just as the moon does.”
b. 1983 in Copenhagen, where he lives and works.
