ART CITIES:London-Oscar Murillo

Born in Colombia and based in various locations, Oscar Murillo is known for an inventive and itinerant practice that encompasses paintings, works on paper, sculptures, installations, actions, live events, collaborative projects, and videos. As a whole, his body of work demonstrates a sustained emphasis on the notion of cultural exchange and the multiple ways in which ideas, languages, and even everyday items are displaced, circulated, and increasingly intermingled.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive

Oscar Murillo’s solo exhibition “Manifestation” exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery unveils new paintings by Murillo and also provides an insight into the artist’s creative process by featuring ongoing bodies of work. These new works are concerned with the ways that information is disseminated in today’s world by mimicking processes of “erasure and retention”. Also on view is a new installation building on Murillo’s sustained interest in travel and questions around labour and the geographical flow of humanity. Murillo’s “manifestation” paintings, in particular, represent a marked evolution in the artist’s engagement with process, containing within them a history of his studio practice. The works build on the technique developed by the artist in his “catalyst” series, which he began in 2011, created by saturating a skein of canvas with pigment, laying a second canvas on top and using a stick or broom handle to transfer marks from one to the other. In the “manifestation” works, Murillo takes this a step further, repurposing fragments of earlier works, along with fields of the deeply saturated “ink-pad” canvases. As with many of Murillo’s works, different pieces are sewn together and painted onto to create a collaged effect, consciously juxtaposing the different energies of painted planes. Similarly, in his “surge” paintings, Murillo partially covers the topmost layer of the canvas in a rush of undulating blues, conveying a sense of motion and defined depth across the surface of the work through the repetitive gesture used to create it. Referencing both the surge of energy used to make the works, as well as the ability of water to flow indiscriminately without regard to arbitrary constructs such as maps or borders, Murillo simultaneously conjures a utopic and cautionary vision of contemporary geopolitics. Presented in an adjacent gallery is a new installation that builds on a group of previous works, such as collective conscience, which was included in the exhibition “Oscar Murillo | Zhang Enli: at K11 Art Museum in Shanghai. Entitled “The Institute of Reconciliation” (2014- ), it was a room-size installation of black canvases, brushed with thick black oil paint before being cut and then sewn back into new compositions and hung like laundry on clotheslines.

Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 24 Grafton Street, London, Duration: 8/6-26/7/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.davidzwirner.com