Oscar Murillo: Serralves, WIELS, Kunsthalle Wien | Online Exhibition | April 16—May 24, 2024

Ahead of Murillo’s commission at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall this summer, this online presentation celebrates the artist’s three concurrent museum shows in Europe, at Fundação de Serralves, Porto; WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna.

Installation view, Oscar Murillo, Together in Our Spirits, Fundação de Serralves, 2023. Photo by Tim Bowditch

Murillo’s first solo exhibition in Portugal, Together in Our Spirits at Fundação de Serralves, brings together some of the major bodies of work developed by the artist in recent years, as well as new works made specifically for the exhibition spaces.

Among the new work created for this exhibition, a significant painting made for Murillo’s manifestation series (2018–present) is displayed in the museum’s chapel.

Oscar Murillo

manifestation, 2023

Oil, oil stick, graphite and spray paint on canvas and linen

118 1/8 x 177 1/8 inches (300 x 450 cm)

Oscar Murillo, manifestation, 2023 (detail)

Installation view, Oscar Murillo, Together in Our Spirits, Fundação de Serralves, 2023. Photo by Tim Bowditch

In his manifestation paintings, Murillo mines the many ways in which ideas, words, and even everyday items are displaced, circulated, and increasingly intermingled. While earlier manifestation paintings foregrounded the use of black oil stick, here flashes of brightly colored pigments peek out from beneath, forming unexpected kaleidoscopic gradients. The end result is a composition whose chaotic surface seems to break free from the picture plane itself in bursts of unbounded vivacity.

Oscar Murillo

manifestation, 2020-2023

Oil, oil stick, spray paint, dirt and graphite on canvas and linen

78 3/4 x 66 7/8 inches (200 x 170 cm)

Oscar Murillo

manifestation, 2019-2023

Oil, oil stick, spray paint, dirt and graphite on canvas and linen

27 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches (70 x 70 cm)

Oscar Murillo

(untitled) news, 2020-2021

Oil, oil stick, graphite, and spray paint on canvas and linen

78 3/4 x 72 7/8 inches (200 x 185 cm)

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At Kunsthalle Wien, Murillo and Rene Matić present existing and newly commissioned works, created specifically in response to the exhibition space and the city of Vienna. The title of the show, JAZZ., touches on characteristics of both artists’ practices, which include elements of improvisation and social interaction.

Installation view, Rene Matić / Oscar Murillo. JAZZ., Kunsthalle Wien, 2024. Photo by Tim Bowditch and Reinis Lismanis

Here, Murillo debuted his series of aesthetic structure paintings, a culmination of the various image-making techniques the artist has developed during his career. The works are constructed over time using existing material fragments from various bodies of work that are cut into squares and sewn together in an alternating checkerboard grid, forming a stratified visual record of time and place.

Oscar Murillo

(untitled) aesthetic structure, 2013-2024

Mixed-media on canvas

37 5/8 x 42 1/2 inches (95.5 x 108 cm)

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“The black squares are also part of long-standing bodies of work.… It is almost as if the black squares are here to bring order, and maybe logic as well, and everything else is about that material, or that moment, or that idea of something coming to its final existence, in a way.”

—Oscar Murillo

Installation view, Rene Matić / Oscar Murillo. JAZZ., Kunsthalle Wien, 2024. Photo by Tim Bowditch and Reinis Lismanis

Works from Murillo’s fields of spirits (2013–2024) and Telegram (2016-2023) series are also on view at Kunsthalle Wien, drawing from the artist’s collaborative Frequencies project in which he covers tables in schools around the world with canvases for pupils to paint, draw, and doodle freely.

Oscar Murillo

Telegram, 2016-2023

Ballpoint pen, fountain pen, graphite, felt tip pen, highlighter pen, permanent marker, paint, crayon, staples, natural pigments, oil pastels, debris and other mixed media on canvas

18 1/2 x 26 3/8 inches (47 x 67 cm)

Oscar Murillo, fields of spirits (Brussels), 2023 (detail). Frequencies canvases form the basis of fields of spirits, exhibited at the Kunsthalle Wien for the first time. For these works, Frequencies canvases are stitched together with other fragments of material to create a composite ground, onto which Murillo has worked in oils.

Oscar Murillo, fields of spirits (Brussels), 2023

For Murillo’s long-term project Frequencies (2013–present), canvases were temporarily affixed to classroom desks in selected schools across the globe, encouraging students to create any kind of mark making—drawing, writing, doodling. The series was shown at the 56th Venice Biennale exhibition, All the World's Futures, in 2015.

Installation view, Oscar Murillo, Together in Our Spirits, Fundação de Serralves, 2023. Photo by Tim Bowditch

Installation view of Oscar Murillo’s presentation at the 56th Venice Biennale, 2015

Murillo’s collection of wearable sculptures, Arepas y Tamales (2022–present) are on view in the museum’s hall, a series he recently presented at the 2022 Venice Biennale in A Storm is Blowing From Paradise at Scuola Grande della Misericordia.

Many of the wearable sculptures include elements Murillo digitally extracted from drawings made on the students’ desks as part of Frequencies.

Installation view, Oscar Murillo, Together in Our Spirits, Fundação de Serralves, 2023. Photo by Tim Bowditch

Installation view, Oscar Murillo: A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise, Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Venice, 2022. © Oscar Murillo. Photo by Tim Bowditch

Oscar Murillo

Arepas y Tamales, 2022

Oil stick, digital print and machine embroidery on heavy cotton, buttons, orange lining, hand embroidered patch, two woven labels, and orange silk pinned on a canvas and metal mannequin with wheels

68 7/8 x 15 3/4 x 13 3/8 inches (175 x 40 x 34 cm)

Oscar Murillo

Arepas y Tamales, 2022

Oil stick, digital print and machine embroidery on light cotton, buttons, one woven label, and orange silk pinned on a canvas and metal mannequin with wheels

68 7/8 x 15 3/4 x 13 3/8 inches (175 x 40 x 34 cm)

Installation view, Oscar Murillo: Masses, WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels. Photo by Reinis Lismanis

Murillo’s exhibition at WIELS welcomes a new chapter in his Frequencies series in which the artist treats the canvases as analog recording devices that enable him to tap into a collective consciousness.

For his disrupted frequencies works, the collection of canvases and the memories they hold were flattened into a raw material mass, to be stitched together and used as a resource for new works, provocatively disrupting the intellectual project of an archive.

Oscar Murillo

disrupted frequencies (Colombia, China, Ghana, United States, Nepal, Morocco, Egypt, India, Colombia, United Kingdom), 2013-2023

Ballpoint pen, fountain pen, graphite, felt tip pen, highlighter pen, permanent marker, paint, crayon, staples, natural pigments, debris, oil, oil stick and other mixed media on canvas

110 1/4 x 126 inches (280 x 320 cm)

Oscar Murillo, disrupted frequencies (Colombia, China, Ghana, United States, Nepal, Morocco, Egypt, India, Colombia, United Kingdom), 2013-2023 (detail). © Oscar Murillo

Learn more about Oscar Murillo’s three current museum shows ahead of his forthcoming commission at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, opening July 20, 2024:

Oscar Murillo: Together in Our Spirits is on view at Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal, through May 26, 2024.

Oscar Murillo: Masses is on view at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, through April 28, 2024.

Rene Matić / Oscar Murillo. JAZZ. is on view at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, through July 28, 2024.

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