"Bathing his subjects in an austere light, and rendering them with strong, confident brushwork, Michael Borremans executes paintings that seduce and hold at bay, keeping the history of art in dialogue while committing wholly to the iconography of our time. The protagonists of these works, derived from pictures in magazines or scientific books, are captured while engaging in activities whose exact nature seems both mundane and mysterious ("they're just sitting there breathing," Borremans told an interviewer), but the artist manages to freight these protagonists, and the air around them, with great emotional tension. Similarly, his apparently sober palette of beiges, browns and greys sometimes gives way to a small flourish of brighter color - a white bow or a ruddy-cheeked face - that breaks into and energizes the whole image. Such sleights of hand, by which paint discreetly but completely incarnates mood, are the crux of Borremans' art, and are what makes him one of the finest contemporary painters in Europe, an heir to the suspended enigmas of Manet and Velazquez and the indoor atmospherics of Chardin and Vermeer. This volume, with its engaging essay by Jeffrey Grove and abundance of color plates, is the first to present all of Borremans' paintings, and thus constitutes the standard survey of his significant accomplishments." --Book Jacket.

Die auffallend virtuos ausgeführten, in zurückhaltend-tonigen Farben gehaltenen Gemälde von Michae͏̈l Borremans (*1963 in Geraardsbergen, Belgien) zeigen zumeist einzelne Figuren oder kleine Gruppen, die sehr konzentriert und mit betonter Gestik agieren. Da nicht erkennbar ist, was genau die Protagonisten tun, wirken diese Bilder mysteriös und surreal; vor nur sparsam ausgeführtem Hintergrund führen sie in ihrer deutlich zeitlosen, an Stillleben gemahnenden Welt letztlich sinnlose Handlungen aus - ein durchaus ironischer Kommentar des Malers auf bürgerliche Normierungen und Zwänge. Vorlagen und Einflüsse für seine komplexen und faszinierenden Arbeiten findet Borremans in alten Fotografien aus den 1930er und 1940er Jahren, Porzellan-Kitschfiguren, bekannten TV-Serien wie in der Literatur. Diese disparaten Elemente führt er, in einer mit Joseph Cornell vergleichbaren Art und Weise, in seine intimen und poetischen Tableaux zusammen. Ausstellungen: S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent 5.2.-10.4.2005 . Parasol Unit, London 3.5.-30.6.2005 . The Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin 14.7.-4.9.2005

Presenting the Belgian artist Michaël Borremans’s newest group of psychologically charged paintings, this catalogue highlights his exceptional technical skill, interest in figuration, and innovative approach to mise-en-scène. “Everything is a self-portrait. And now I have been painting monkeys. . . . It’s like making a movie.” —Michaël Borremans, Interview magazine As a pendant to his acclaimed catalogue The Acrobat, The Monkey showcases seventeen paintings that reveal his interest in exploring surface and artifice. Borremans portrays mysterious sitters—including the titular monkeys, which are glazed toy figurines—and depicts enigmatic scenes that simultaneously invite viewers in and keep them at bay. Katya Tylevich’s insightful commentary delves into the depths of Borremans’s compositions, connecting the themes and motifs in The Monkey to those present in previous bodies of work. Tylevich delves into the complex emotional and art-historical registers at play in the artist’s new paintings and maps the trajectory of his practice, observing other instances of repetition and fabulation across his practice. The publication, featuring this essay alongside beautifully illustrated images of the new paintings, serves as the ideal complement to the artist’s 2024 exhibition at David Zwirner, London.

Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Kunstmuseum Basel

Belgian artist Michaël Borremans (born 1963) is among the most brilliant painters of emotion of the past half-century. An heir to the sober, enigmatic character studies of Manet and Velazquez and the thick indoor atmospheres of Vermeer, Borremans has greatly advanced this tradition, in part through his incorporation of cinematic allusion and of that uniquely Belgian take on Surrealism that is at once deeply phlegmatic and bizarrely comical. Any divisions between realism and flights of fantasy are mysteriously abolished by Borremans, however, leaving the viewer to confront his intense, almost claustrophobic painterly world. Published for an exhibition at BAWAG Contemporary in Vienna, Magnetics presents a concise selection of a dozen canvases made over the past five years, examined in dialogue with the artist's drawings and films.

Belgium-based Michael Borremans creates absurd and sometimes ominous paintings. "Horse Hunting" (2005), for example, depicts, in a muddy palette, a pale and moody-looking man in a suit jacket and crisp white shirt shoving two twigs up his nose. He stares straight at us, and the wall behind him is filled with his shadow. Borremans has said of his paintings, "I use clichés and other elements that are part of a collective consciousness... my work would be perfect on biscuit tins." At the 2006 Berlin Biennale, Borremans showed a film on a small LCD screen, which he had framed like a painting. The piece was based on a 2002 drawing of a girl, which he reproduced in three dimensions, so that the girl slowly spins around. Whatever the medium, Borremans' work bears this trademark sense of absurdity verging on menace. Weight is published concurrently with an exhibition at De Appel in Amsterdam.