Oscar Murillo

Galerie Marian Goodman, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2014

“I think painting is important, personally for me but also as a vessel of communication and infiltrating, certainly. It addresses cultural beliefs that are still so rooted and it’s still very entrenched. And I think of where my paintings end up. Maybe, like Luc Tuymans’s, in beautiful bourgeois houses somewhere in Europe or the US. So I think of my work in the context of a vessel to infiltrate certain spaces. It’s almost to say that there’s no point throwing stones from the outside if you can be inside and have that communication and dialogue that starts in those spaces.” (Oscar Murillo, Interview with Krithika Varagur,“Interview with Oscar Murillo,” The White Review, July 2020). 

Born in Colombia but raised in London, U.K., Oscar Murillo is renowned for his comprehensive artistic practice incorporating paintings, sculptures, video art, works on paper, and live performance. Murillo, having adopted a global mindset, has experienced a multitude of different cultures and social and economic classes, while maintaining that the “universality of the human experience” remains the constant. While his experiences have influenced the essence and soul of his works, the variety of mediums in which Murillo practices is also a product of the breadth of  materials and people with which he has worked. 

While unlike some of the artist’s more recent pieces, the subtlety of his most identifiable techniques is exquisite in the present work, (Meter SQ). Unlike his most recent vibrant canvases or those featuring text, this composition purely exposes the method by and intention with which he works. The pieces of linen sewn together forming a checkered grid leave a minimalist impression; however, at second glance, the hand of the artist is revealed in the uneven lines and loose threads with which the grid is sewn. In keeping with the rest of his body of work, the linen canvas has been worked on his studio floor, allowing for the dust and dirt to accumulate on the work by its own nature. Murillo extends his piece past the traditional scope of painting, allowing chance and frenzied, smeared marks to create a more complex composition.