Michaël Borremans @ David Zwirner, Hong Kong - Fire from the Sun

Michaël Borremans: Fire from the Sun
David Zwirner, Hong Kong
Through March 10, 2018

Michaël Borremans 

Fire from the Sun, 2017 

Oil on Panel , 20 x 22.5 cm. 

© Michaël Borremans

David Zwirner presents an exhibition of new paintings by Michaël Borremans, inaugurating the gallery’s space in Hong Kong. This is the artist’s first solo show in Hong Kong and his sixth overall with David Zwirner.

Fire from the Sun includes small and large scale works that feature toddlers engaged in playful but mysterious acts with sinister overtones and insinuations of violence. The 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 Michaël 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. Other paintings in the exhibition depict obscure machines, whose enigmatic presence appears foreboding in the context of the toddlers and suggests an element of scientific experimentation.

Michaël Borremans has gained worldwide recognition for his innovative approach to painting. Combining technical mastery with subject matter that defies straightforward interpretation, his charged canvases address universal themes with a specifically contemporary complexity. As Michael Bracewell argues in new scholarship on the artist, published in the accompanying exhibition catalogue, viewers are “caught in a strange time loop, in which the nobility of execution ascribed to Old Masters―the re-creation in painting of human presence, caught both stilled, in a particular instant of its being, and for eternity―is placed in the service of vertiginous modernist vision.” As Bracewell further notes on these works, they portray psychological states that are not intended to be decoded: “the scenes depicted by the majority of paintings comprising Fire from the Sun show a state of being or society in which the primal is uncontrolled, without bearings, in a state of anarchy―the Id of Freudian primary process run riot, with no Ego to mediate between instinctual behavior and ‘reality.‘ 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.”

Michaël Borremans was born in 1963 in Geraardsbergen, Belgium. In 1996, he received his M.F.A. from Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst, Campus St. Lucas, in Ghent. David Zwirner has represented the artist’s works since 2001. Previous solo exhibitions at the gallery include Black Mould (London, 2015) The Devil’s Dress (New York, 2011), Taking Turns (New York, 2009), Horse Hunting (New York, 2006), and Trickland (New York, 2003).

Michaël Borremans’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at many prominent institutions. Most recently, Michaël Borremans: Fixture, was presented at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga in 2015-2016. A major museum survey, Michaël Borremans: As sweet as it gets, which included one hundred works from 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 previous year, Michaël Borremans: The Advantage, the artist’s first museum solo show in Japan, was on view at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

In 2011, Michaël Borremans: Eating the Beard, a comprehensive solo show was presented at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, and traveled to the Mu´´csarnok 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 which have hosted solo exhibitions include the kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (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 the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin); Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio (2005); Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, Germany (2004); and Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (both 2004).

Work by the artist is held in public collections internationally, including Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; 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, Minnesota. Borremans lives and works in Ghent.

DAVID ZWIRNER, HONG KONG
5-6/F, H Queen's, 80 Queen's Road Central Hong Kong
www.davidzwirner.com

Michael Borremans, Taking Turns

David Zwirner presents an exhibition of new films and paintings by Belgian artist Michaël Borremans. This is the first time the artist’s films will be shown in the United States, and is also the world premier of Taking Turns. Taking Turns is the artist’s third solo show at David Zwirner. Previous shows at the gallery include Horse Hunting (2006) and Trickland (2003), which was the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States. For the current show at David Zwirner, Borremans has created five new paintings and is presenting three films: The Feeding, The Storm, and Taking Turns. For this exhibition, the gallery has been divided into two relatively equal spaces. Upon entering the first space, a 35mm film projector shows a loop of The Storm as a large-scale projection, reaching close to 15 feet in height and 23 feet in width on the gallery wall. In the film, three black men, wearing identical cream-colored uniforms (a mix of work clothes and stage costumes), are sitting slumped in chairs in the corner of a white, empty room. The harsh light of a naked bulb alters the shot by modifying the intensity of the shadows moving imperceptibly on the surface of the wall. (1) The second gallery space introduces an intimate presentation of two other 35mm films, The Feeding and Taking Turns, both which have been transferred to DVDs and viewed within wall-mounted wooden frames. The films are shown alongside the exhibition’s five oil on canvas paintings: The Apron, Earthlight Room, The Load, The Load (II), The Load (III). In The Feeding, the three figures from The Storm reappear, standing around enormous reams of white cardboard that give the impression of levitating above a table covered with a spotless cloth in the middle of a room. (2) In Taking Turns, a woman holds the torso of a life-sized mannequin, and slowly moves and spins the torso on top of a horizontal surface. There is an ambiguity between what is real and what is artificial, as their two faces and figures overlap and rotate in the film’s frames. Once again, the theme of the double, or the doppelganger, is a device encountered throughout Borremans’ oeuvre. (3) Formally and thematically, Borremans’ films are closely related to his two-dimensional work. They are shifting ‘tableaux vivants’ with poetic titles, in which the artist very gradually, with subtle camera work, creates an oppressive atmosphere. He uses a fixed camera position or deliberately zooms in on certain details of the scenery, body parts, faces, or clothing. With slight light-dark fluctuations, flowing edited shots or the repetition of certain actions, Borremans builds up a gripping but subdued suspense. (4) Beginning in April 2009, the work from the exhibition at David Zwirner, along with additional drawings, will be presented at kestnergesellschaft in Hannover, Germany. Borremans first presented a film projection as an integral part of a room-filled installation at the Berlin Biennale in 2006. In 2007, his cinematic work was then shown at de Appel Arts Centre in Amsterdam, in his first solo exhibition in The Netherlands. In 2008, the show traveled to Centro de Artes Visuais in Coimbra, Portugal. In 2008, he also had shows at Gallery Koyanagi in Tokyo, Japan and Zeno X Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. Other solo exhibitions include La Maison Rouge in Paris (2006), Kunsthalle Bremerhaven in Bremerhaven, Germany (2004), and Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, Switzerland (2004). In 2005, he had a one-person exhibition of paintings and drawings at S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Belgium. The paintings exhibition then traveled to Parasol Unit in London, England, the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, Ireland; the drawing exhibition traveled to the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio in the United States. In November 2008, Borremans received the Overbeck-Preis für Bildende Kunst der Gemeinnützigen in Lübeck, Germany. This prize was accompanied by a solo exhibition at the museum, Overbeck-Gesellschaft. Michaël Borremans (born 1963, Geraardsbergen, Belgium) lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. He received his M.F.A. from Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst, Campus St. Lucas, Ghent. His work is held in the collections of major museums, including, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, all in Los Angeles, California; High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent, Belgium; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Notes (1) Philippe-Alain Michaud, “Devil’s Dolls: On the Film-Paintings of Michaël Borremans,” Michaël Borremans: Weight (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008), p. 58. (2) Ibid. p. 67. (3) Delfim Sardo, “The Enchanted Wanderer,” Michaël Borremans: Weight (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008), p. 35. (4) de Appel Arts Centre, exhibition notes on website MICHAËL BORREMANS Taking Turns February 24 – March 25, 2009 David Zwirner Gallery 525 West 19th Street New York, NY 10011 Tel 212 727 2070 Fax 212 727 2072 http://www.davidzwirner.com/