Oscar Murillo Reflects On Building a Body of Work That Resists Linear Time
Those art aficionados who aren’t in Doha this week are likely in Mexico City for ZONAMACO. Every year during Mexico City Art Week, kurimanzutto, the city’s most prestigious gallery, stages an ambitious exhibition at its sprawling space in San Miguel Chapultepec, and this year’s, “oscar murillo: el pozo de agua,” brings together 15 years of work by the superstar painter. We caught up with the artist to hear more about the show, which is a can’t-miss if you’re in CDMX this week.
The press release for this show opens with a poem that makes reference to the “sedimentation of time.” What does that line mean for you, and how does it tie into the rest of the show?
Sedimentation of time references Frequencies as an index, an encyclopedic library, a universe in how I view the world—perhaps a gesture toward how different historical temporalities, experiences and layers of meaning settle and accumulate over time. It suggests history is not linear, but rather a coexistence of multiple, overlapping layers (structures, behaviors, events) that operate at different speeds, like a Flight drawing, the act of drawing at the speed of flight—say, at 600 mph or, differently, let’s say a 14-year-old child in a school in Singapore taking six months to contribute to the Frequencies database in 2014.
This show collects work from the last decade and a half of your practice. What’s it been like to see all of it together at the same time? Did you learn anything about yourself?
Time exists differently; it is not linear. So it is not a survey of time as your question suggests. Like the work, Telegram, it comes together through the sedimentation of time. Or like The
How would you describe your relationship to the surfaces of your work? How has that evolved over the years?
These surfaces register marks and energy. I don’t have an obsessive relationship to the surface in the plastic sense of painting, but I do think about intensity both in the physical and psychological sense.
I liked your work at this fall’s São Paulo Biennial, wherein you placed surfaces around the building for others to mark. How did you come to this idea and how does it relate to the rest of your practice?
In many ways, Social mapping is an evolution of Frequencies with a very short performative tempo, as well as a different performative structure for the general public. In the context of a cultural institution and the streets themselves, it is also a device to record the passing of the masses, through the simple act of making a mark. On the other hand, Frequencies is a global network, it attaches itself to the framework and infrastructure of the school, and it collaborates with children as vessels. Social mapping coincides with this moment of censorship and turbulence we are living through, wherein layers upon layers of marks reveal the thoughts that people are freely recording and sharing, however trivial or profound.
When you were first starting out, you fast became a market darling. How does that experience inform the art you’re making today?
Your question is somewhat sensationalist. I am not a star of anything, I don’t recall such a time. I do remember continuous focus and experimentation in the studio.
What are the differences between how your work is received in Latin and South America versus elsewhere in the world?
Ideas in the work are borne out of a shifting global order that is currently under threat. Social mapping is perhaps a response to this. It is my way of being in the street as a witness.
Do you have a favorite work in the show? One that resonates with you for personal reasons?
The installation of The
In this sense, The