Oscar Murillo Unveils Social Anxieties

Located in the 16th-century Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome, Fondazione Memmo has made its name commissioning artists to create new works in close collaboration with local artisans to introduce them to different techniques. When London-based Colombian artist Oscar Murillo was invited to do a solo show, however, the travel restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic meant that his research trips, from which he draws inspiration and that is integral to his practice, were brought to a halt.

During the two years in which the artist developed ‘Spirits and Gestures’ – the longest he has ever worked on a show – time both collapsed and expanded. Whenever possible, Murillo returned to the city to absorb the weight of Rome’s history, art and architecture, ultimately devising a subtle, introspective show that paid quiet homage to two Rome-born artists: the fin-de-siècle symbolist painter Giulio Aristide Sartorio and the 20th-century painter and set designer Domenico Gnoli.

Conceived as a single installation spanning all the galleries, Spirits and Gestures (2021) begins with a stretched canvas on which furious blues and yellows attempt to obliterate the painting’s black background. The work sets the tone for the show, which oscillates between beauty and anxiety. The wall giving onto the palazzo’s inner courtyard consists of floor-to-ceiling windows, against which Murillo has placed found items of wooden furniture – chairs, church pews, prayer kneelers – which could be read as either as a blockade or protective barrier. The furniture is adorned with compact sculptures made of clay and corn, reminiscent of burnt loaves of bread. Calling to mind cancerous cells, these carbonised sculptures lie atop black and white photocopies of various works by Gnoli. Their propulsive gestures present a stark contrast to Gnoli’s restrained figurative practice. The photocopies are further overlaid with urgently scribbled words such as ‘power’ and ‘riot’, pointing to Murillo’s ongoing concern with social injustice and power inequalities.

In the second gallery, Murillo’s black curtains, The Institute of Reconciliation (2014-ongoing), which featured prominently at the entrance to the central pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, have now been repurposed and hang from wooden beams. Occasionally painted in hues of bright blue, they act as a veiled entryway to what might be a haunted house – or an anxious mind. Passing through the labyrinthine curtains, you stumble upon a small, radiant painting: an exquisite work by Sartorio, Mercurio (1925), featuring Mercury, the Roman god of travel and speed. Its immaculate execution and calming palette induce the sense of a safe haven in darkness, a contrast to Murillo’s frenzied, large-scale paintings.

In the last room, Spirits and Gestures continues in the form of two large, unstretched canvases comprising a patchwork of different fabrics sewn together. Murillo created these works in situ, working in bursts of raw inspiration and energized mark-making, applying oil stick directly onto the canvases laid out on the floor. Expressionist in style, they feature bold horizontal strokes of blue, red and white that shimmer across the canvases like a glimmering sea at sunset. While they exude energy, these canvases are measured, referencing the later works of the French impressionist Claude Monet, whose cataracts infamously impacted his vision to such an extent that it altered his painting style. For Murillo, this impairment echoes the ‘social cataracts’ – to quote from an artist’s text for the show – that envelop our vision, cloaking in beauty the darkness that lurks within. The past two years have seen a series of upheaval, from social unrest and climate change to a global pandemic. Murillo’s work speaks to this historic moment – we are on the brink of a precipice, the veil temporarily lifted. How do we reckon with the aftermath?

Oscar Murillo, ‘Spirits and Gestures’  is on view at Fondazione Memmo, Rome, until 10 March 2022.

_{Main image: Oscar Murillo, Spirits and Gestures, 2021, installation view, Fondazione Memmo, Rome. Courtesy: the artist and Fondazione Memmo; photograph: Daniele Molajoli}