Britain/Columbia
Oscar Murillo was born in 1986, Colombia, currently lives and works in London.
Murillo earned his B.F.A. in 2007 from the University of Westminster, London, followed by his M.F.A. in 2012 from the Royal College of Art, London. He joined David Zwirner in 2013 and had his inaugural exhibition, titled A Mercantile Novel, at the gallery in New York the following year.
An upcoming solo show of Murillo’s work is planned for the fall of 2016 at the Yarat Contemporary Art Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan. The artist is currently participating in the 2nd Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art 2016 in China and the 3rd Aichi Triennial. Homo Faber: A Rainbow Caravan in Japan. Later this year, his work will be included in the 5th Anyang Public Art Project (APAP) in Korea.
Murillo participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including the 6th Marrakech Biennale: Not New Now; the 20th Biennale of Sydney: The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed; and Towards a Larger World at Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Previous group exhibitions include those held in 2014 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent; Los Angeles County Museum of Art etc.
Oscar Murillo's large-scale paintings imply action, performance, and chaos, but are in fact methodically composed of rough-hewn, stitched canvases that often incorporate fragments of text as well as studio debris such as dirt and dust. His paintings, video works, and performances are tied to a notion of community stemming from the artist's cross-cultural ties to London, where he currently lives and works, and Colombia, where he was born in 1986 and left for London in 1996.
For Murillo's ongoing long-term project Frequencies, created in collaboration with members of his family and political scientist Clara Dublanc. Frequencies in China across six provinces. The six provinces and cities are Shanghai; Hangzhou, Zhejiang; Duchang, Jiangxi; Yiyang, Hunan; Qingyan, Guizhou; Qujing, Yunnan.This road goes from east to west, from China's most developed business area to the southwest hinterland where local tradition is well-preserved.
This project is completed through collaboration with students aged 10 to 16 years old all over the world. Project team went to schools to arrange the canvases and show students and teachers their past projects. The canvases are temporarily affixed to classroom desks for a whole school term during which period they can use them freely. And they encourage students who have engaged in this project to invite other friends to join in this project and create something on the canvases.
The work consists of canvases temporarily fixed on the desks. Students will not get any specific materials or have to follow any stipulations on what contents to write or draw. So the students will consciously or unconsciously record their daily activities in the fixed canvases. Murillo observed many forces against traditional thoughts in the work made by kids at this age, and he sees these as a key point to connect his own work and experiment to the children’s work. For the canvas is fixed at the desk for a long time, the work on the canvas reproduces their production process, which not only catches the children's minds and performance, but also produce a product against external factors.
It was a field research of the social landscape of China as a representative of Eastern societies and the landscape of Western societies. Using weaving as the metaphor and weaving together the east and the west, Murillo brought children as a social group into the scope of art.
