Michaël Borremans and Óscar Murillo at David Zwirner Michael Borremans - The Acrobat - 2021 From 28 April to 4 June 2022, David Zwirner presents in New York two exhibitions of the work of Michaël Borremans and Óscar Murillo. Source: David Zwirner, New York ·· Image: Michaël Borremans, "The Acrobat", 2021 © Michaël Borremans. Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner Born in Belgium in 1963, Michaël Borremans is internationally renowned for his style of painting, which harks back to the work of masters like Velázquez or Manet. The exhibition at Hauser & Wirth -the artist's seventh at the gallery- includes recent works, created during the last two years, a period marked by the global pandemic. The title of the exhibition, "The Acrobat", refers to one of the paintings on display, which shows an androgynous figure in a pink hoodie somewhat reminiscent of Max Beckmann's "Quappi in a Pink Sweater" (1932-34, Museo Thyssen). In a press release, the gallery explains that "the eight portraits and seven scenographic compositions in ‘The Acrobat’ are imbued with pending questions and underlying tensions that operate on multiple registers. Borremans seemingly revisits subject matter from his own body of work, introducing new and varied meanings in every iteration of his mysterious compositions." The gallery also reproduces writer Katya Tylevich's opinion of these paintings: "Yes, these are paintings made across two years of a global pandemic, and an allegory of isolation leaps out in a puff of confetti." Coinciding with "The Acrobat", the David Zwirner Gallery presents, also in New York, an exhibition of the work of Colombian artist Óscar Murillo (b.1986). Entitled "Ourself behind ourself concealed", the exhibition includes large-scale works created over the past four years. Hauser & Wirth explains in a press release that "Murillo’s new paintings are characteristic of his studio practice and his sustained engagement with process, as well as his continued emphasis on art-making as a means of synthesizing sociopolitical contexts. The title of this exhibition is drawn from Emily Dickinson’s 1862 poem that opens, ‘One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—.’ This literary work centers on the image of a specter within the self, a notion that connects to meditations, within Murillo’s practice, on dark forces present in both the personal and the political. The result of a physically demanding, intuitively guided approach, these dynamic compositions are imbued with a spiritual resonance that forms a thread through his works over recent years."

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