The Life And Work Of Michaël Borremans

These unsettling and highly ambiguous paintings by Borremans offer up individual and idiosyncratic interpretations depending on the viewer’s own perspective and life experience.

Known for both his paintings and film, Borremans is a pioneer in the art of combining image in motion. His films are generally slow-paced collections of images with minimal movement or progression. In some, gesture is virtually indistinct, with figures simply sitting in a circle, meditating or lifeless. In other films, individual shots remind the viewer of the artist’s other medium, painting. Not only are the films themselves framed by the TV – the TV itself is often set in a wooden frame, and the figures who appear in the film are framed, again, by the shot in which they find themselves. The slow movement of the camera often stops, focusing for a moment on the detail of a face, or presenting a bust as if it were in a painting. Certain scenes from the films morph into Borremans’ paintings, crossing a profound aesthetic, technical and conceptual barrier.

Borremans’ work has an eerie and solitary feel that draws viewers in, forcing them to question the dichotomy between the realistic figures and their apparent lifelessness, thereby challenging the traditional view of realism.

Borremans was born in Geraardebergen, East Flanders in 1963. From his background in photography at the College of Arts and Sciences Saint Luke in Ghent, Borremans then began to explore drawing and painting as a method of expression. Prior to his success as a full-time artist, Borremans taught at the Secondary Municipal Art Institute of Ghent until his work was discovered by fellow Flemish painter Jan Van Imschoot. This meeting of the two artists eventually, through Van Imschoot’s connections, led to Borremans’ first major exhibition at the Zeno X gallery in Antwerp. Since then, Borremans has been exhibited around Europe and America.