joseph scissorhands: Oscar Murillo: Violent Amnesia

Monday 24 June 2019

Oscar Murillo: Violent Amnesia

violent amnesia, 2014-2018

Thinking of these two words together, they are like magnets repelling each other. It's about a constant jarring. The title has to do with the idea that the world is upside down. You can see this in the painting, and the West is missing - the US and Europe. Then you have the images of birds coming from the north, suggesting an invasion of sorts. The title, violent amnesia, is trying to capture this idea of forgetting, but doing it in a way that is not easy. I try hard to keep a balance in my work between desire to think primarily about image-making, texture, form and so on, and this constant awareness of the world, which is something that comes naturally to me. What's happening in Venezuela, the exodus of people leaving to enter Colombia for instance. The exhibition title is also about knowing that what I want to express can never be fully realised, can never be fully imagined. - Oscar Murillo

Whilst in Cambridge I visited Kettle's Yard for this show by Oscar Murillo. It was full of canvases of densely layered, imagery and frenetic mark making, reminiscent of Rauschenberg and Twombly. There were also blackened canvases covering the floor of one gallery and an installation of church pews in another which appeared to have suffered an episode of violence. There was so much energy here, and Murillo had chosen a boat painting by Alfred Wallis from the Kettle's Yard collection to echo the theme of migration and movement. Wallis's boat sailed on calmly, navigating its way through the turbulence of this exciting exhibition. I want to catch Murillo's concurrent show at David Zwirner in London now.