OSCAR MURILLO | Untitled

Sunset Art Inc., Los Angeles
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is lighter, brighter and cooler in the original. The catalogue illustration also fails to convey the rich texture on the work. Condition: This work is in very good and original condition, all collaged elements appear stable. The canvas is slightly slack. no restoration is apparent when examined under-violet light.
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Powerfully juxtaposing bold swathes of yellow and black paint with frenzied marks scribbled in an all-over composition, Untitled is an exquisite demonstration of Colombian artist Oscar Murillo’s artistic process and ingenuity. Immediately transferring the urgency and relentless energy that informs the artist’s practice, the present work explores the aesthetic and conceptual interspersion of raw materials, half-finished painting and detritus that accumulate on the work’s surface during the process of creation. By obliterating the dichotomy between artistic practice and daily life, Murillo’s paintings capture the unique atmosphere of specific moments in time, archiving the interaction between the artist and his materials and deliberately incorporating elements of chance that are absorbed by the material while lying on the studio floor. The result is a highly distinctive aesthetic that is suffused by the notion of performative action to explore the material tradition of painting. Underneath the numerous coatings of colour, scattered letters and excised words remain half-hidden from the eye. This practice is typical of the artist, for whom disconnected words are highly symbolically charged: “For me the words are very displaced. Like cultural displacement with performance, in painting it’s material displacement, object displacement… I also like to think that these paintings also imply a displacement of time. They’re like rugs. An unstretched painting is a kind of abstract thing, one that suggests that it perhaps has been found or comes from some other space or time. But while it has this aura of being a historical thing when placed out of context, it just comes from the studio” (Oscar Murillo in conversation with Legacy Russell, Bomb Magazine, No. 122, Winter 2013, online).

Murillo’s artistic practice is deeply intertwined with his origins growing up in the small mountain-side town of La Paila in South East Columbia. Rather than being exposed to a traditional Western art education, Murillo appropriated his experiences from the streets, the local industry of sugar cane production as well as encounters with his family and friends, all of which have provided a strong catalyst to explore the conjunction of different materials and mediums. When moving to London, the artist encountered an entirely different culture yet remained closely linked to his origins. Working as a cleaner at night in office buildings in the City of London alongside fellow Colombians, Murillo began to incorporate the tools of his trade into his process of art production. For example, Murillo detached a broomstick from its conventional role as cleaning product, instead appropriating it as an instrument with which he could form, with some irony, winding, disorderly, tactile marks amongst the chaotic pollution of his studio floor. Converging and uniting a wide, almost discordant array of painterly elements and materials, Untitled is an artistic tour de force that exudes lived history.