Michaël Borremans: Fire from the Sun (Spotlight)

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In this series of work, 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 Borremans’s recent work. 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. His paintings depict figures sometimes incomplete with limbs or heads missing, frozen mid gesture, seemingly swaying or dancing to unheard music or engaging in some sinister ritual. Embarking on a career as a painter relatively late, at the age of 33, Belgian artist Michaël Borremans initially trained as a draughtsman and engraver at Saint Lucas in Ghent.

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Michaël Borremans, inaugurating the gallery’s space in Hong Kong. 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. To finish on a lighter note, David Zwirner’s first outpost in Asia will located in H Queen’s, the new tower in Hong Kong’s Central district. From January 27 to March 10, Michaël Borremans, Belgian painter and filmmaker, will have his first solo show in Hong-Kong for the opening of the outpost of David Zwirner Gallery, Fire from the Sun. In his accompanying essay, critic and curator Michael Bracewell takes an in-depth look into specific paintings, tackling both the highly charged subject matter and the masterly command of the medium.Available in both English-only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions, this series makes the work of these important artists accessible to a wider audience. 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. As unsettling punctuation marks Borremans also included two large paintings of industrial apparatuses. Having travelled from Los Angeles to attend the opening, I juxtaposed these paintings against the morning’s news: against cavalier acts of violence and bloody origins, against history’s unwillingness to be erased, no matter the pressure to do so.

Michaël Borremans combine horror and innocence in this young children, becoming allegories of the human condition. The painted figure is beside the point, more absent than present, an object to be posed and deciphered like a riddle, rather than a subject with a story. The general opening was likewise packed—crammed, stuffed—no doubt with people from different starting points. Hong Kong is an international city, a port city, a crux of world politics, world history and world finances. Michaël Borremans: The Advantage, the artist’s first museum solo show in Japan, was also on view in 2014 at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.Published on the occasion of Borremans’s eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner in Hong Kong, this publication is available in both English-only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions. There is an atmosphere of brewing tension and anxiety with an undertow of horror tugging away beneath the surface in his paintings: with his paintbrush Borremans brings to life a cargo of existentialism. Michaël Borremans: Fire from the Sun [author]Katya Tylevich[/author] visits a brutal and profound exhibition by the Belgian artist Michaël Borremans, featuring a host of Sistine-style cherubs, sometimes covered in blood. His selected writings on visual art, The Space Between, were published by Ridinghouse, London in 2011.

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 Borremans’s recent work. Some of Borremans' paintings, such as Automat (I) (2008), feature figures with truncated torsos or dismembered limbs, further suggesting that these are figures trapped by a pervading sense of futility. A major museum survey, Michaël Borremans: As sweet as it gets, which included one hundred works from the past two decades, was on view at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 2014. 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). His recent publications include The Rise of David Bowie 1972–1973 (Taschen, 2016), Bridget Riley: Paintings and Related Work (National Gallery, 2010), and a short story, The Way Ahead (Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2018).

In the most evident terms, Fire From The Sun portrays children aged two or three in various stages of play with fire and what appear to be human limbs, even hair.