A detail of an artwork by Michaël Borremans titled The Commuter II dated 2022

's (b. 1963) innovative approach to painting combines technical mastery with subject matter that defies straightforward interpretation. His charged canvases address universal themes that seem to resonate with a specifically contemporary complexity.

The artist was born in 1963 in Geraardsbergen, Belgium, and in 1996 he received his M.F.A. from Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst, Campus St. Lucas, in Ghent. Borremans continues to live and work in Ghent. David Zwirner has represented the artist’s work since 2001. In June 2024, the solo exhibition 

 went on view at David Zwirner, London. Previous solo presentations of the artist’s work at the gallery include 

Borremans’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at a number of prominent institutions. A comprehensive solo exhibition will open at Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, in November 2024. In April 2024, Prada Rong Zhai opened 

, the presentation of which is installed in a 1918 historic home in the Jing’an district of Shanghai. In 2020, the two-person presentation, 

Michaël Borremans | Mark Manders: Double Silence

, was on view at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. Also in 2020, 

 was on view at Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague. 

was presented at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain, in 2015–2016. A major museum survey, 

, which included one hundred works from the past two decades, was on view at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 2014. The exhibition traveled later in the year to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, followed by the Dallas Museum of Art in 2015. 

, the artist’s first solo museum show in Japan, was also on view in 2014 at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

, a comprehensive solo show, was presented at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, and traveled to the Műcsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, and the Kunsthalle Helsinki. In 2010, he had a solo exhibition at the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, as well as commissioned work on view at the Royal Palace in Brussels. Other venues that have hosted solo exhibitions include the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany (2009); de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam (2007); Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent (2005; traveled to Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London; and Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin); Cleveland Museum of Art (2005); Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, Germany (2004); and the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2004).

Work by the artist is held in public collections internationally, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Portrait of Michaël Borremans. Photo by Alex Salinas

Michael Bracewell published three novels and three novellas between 1988 and 1999. He has since written extensively on modern and contemporary art and culture, and is a contributor to 

 magazines. His recent publications include 

Bridget Riley: Paintings and Related Work

 (National Gallery, 2010), and a short story, 

 (Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2018). He was co-curator of 

The Secret Public: The Last Days of the British Underground 1978–1988

 at Kunstverein Muenchen and The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in 2006 and 

The Dark Monarch: British Modernism and the Occult

 at Tate St Ives in 2009. His selected writings on visual art, 

, were published by Ridinghouse, London in 2011.

Michael Bracewell

 from David Zwirner Books features new work by a leading contemporary artist. Available in both English-only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions, this series makes the work of these important artists accessible to a wider audience.

Spotlight Series

The first in a series of small-format publications devoted to single bodies of work, 

 highlights Michaël Borremans’s new work, which features toddlers engaged in playful but mysterious acts with sinister overtones and insinuations of violence.

Known for his ability to recall classical painting, both through technical mastery and subject matter, Borremans’s depiction of the uncanny, the perhaps secret, the bizarre, often surprises, sometimes disturbs the viewer. In this series of work, children are presented alone or in groups against a studio-like backdrop that negates time and space, while underlining the theatrical atmosphere and artifice that exists throughout Borremans’s recent work. Reminiscent of cherubs in Renaissance paintings, the toddlers appear as allegories of the human condition, their archetypal innocence contrasted with their suggested deviousness.

In his accompanying essay, critic and curator Michael Bracewell takes an in-depth look into specific paintings, tackling both the highly charged subject matter and the masterly command of the medium. He writes, “The art of Michaël Borremans seems always to have been predicated on a confluence of enigma, ambiguity, and painterly poetics—accosting beauty with strangeness; making historic Romanticism subjugate to mysterious controlling forces that are neither crudely malevolent nor necessarily benign.” Published on the occasion of Borremans’s eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner in Hong Kong, this publication is available in both English-only and 

Michaël Borremans: Fire from the Sun

Michaël Borremans: Fire from the Sun | Books

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.