BEAUTY: Painting--Michaël Borremans

I seem to be synchronistically stumbling upon a series of artists who share a similar texture and sensibility. (Being a Jungian, I will be meditating upon what this is telling me...) Michaël Borremans is a Belgian painter and filmmaker whose work echoes the artists in my previous two posts, Adrian Ghenie and Daniel Pitin. Like them, his work references a European sensibility of decades gone by and includes compositions seemingly based on photographs from the 30s and 40s. Borremans also chooses to paint out-of-context moments that, especially like Pitin, imply some sort of sinking feeling, a sense that what we are witnessing exists in a frightening part of the darkness of humanity; it makes sense in a realm beyond our understanding. Much of what we see resembles some kind of pseudo-scientific experiments done during World War II (see The Pupils with young men dripping their own tears into the eyes of others). It's also interesting to note that all three artists feature half torsos, some in boxes. But unlike Ghenie and Pitin, Borremans' work is a little cleaner and slightly more stylized. Borremans cites Manet, Degas and the Spanish court painter Velazquez as inspirations.

Top to bottom: The Pupils; The Constellation; The German; Four Fairies; The Swimming Pool; still from the 35mm film Taking Turns

Borremans is represented in Antwerp by Zeno X Gallery and in New York City by David Zwirner Gallery.
http://www.zeno-x.com/artists/michael_borremans.htm
http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/11/