kurimanzutto is proud to present a solo presentation by Colombian artist Oscar Murillo for Art Basel Hong Kong 2024. Aesthetic structures are a new body of work born out of Murillo’s decade-long enquiry into performance, experimentation and the sedimentation of material. Alongside this sits the artist's interest in the inherent failure of the act of painting.
In his studio, Murillo lines up square pieces of fabric, creating a neat patchwork surface ready to be stitched. Each square is the same yet different: black, yellow, red or blue with gestures, prints or marks. The patchwork arrangement reflects an ongoing playfulness in Murillo’s work that looks to disrupt the formalities of painting. The fragments that compose these pieces, mostly cut from the artist’s black paintings (formerly draped, crumpled, and folded throughout exhibition spaces) point to a tension between leisure and work.
The title itself, aesthetic structure, is a play on words, representative of the tension between the industrial and aesthetic process of making.
The series meditates on the performative gestures seen at the Serpentine Gallery in 2012 in Lygia Pape’s solo exhibition, Magnetized Space, and points to a longstanding reference in Murillo’s practice: the 1950s Brazilian Neo-Concretist movement, which sought to include art in everyday life.
Murillo references this movement by playing with the placement of his works, whether within or beyond the gallery setting. This has included leaving unstretched paintings on the floors of MoMA for the public to freely interact with (2015), using them as yoga mats in the Roman amphitheatre of LUMA Foundation, Arles (2011), hosting a cleaners’ party at Serpentine Gallery (2012), organising bingo games and lotteries at South London Gallery (2013), and presenting durational readings of Patricia Galvão’s Industrial Park in private collectors houses and institutions worldwide.
Alongside formal visual elements, this ongoing playfulness offers further contemplation of the themes present in Murillo’s practice, such as the fragmentary effects of labour and the possibilities (or limitations) of reconstructing an alternative through play.
preview: malik@kurimanzutto.com
