UNIQLO Tate Play Oscar Murillo

Murillo’s work traces the histories of how people and objects move around the world. He explores these ideas through installation, painting and performance.

The large-scale, multi-panelled paintings are a survey of the artist’s Surge series, inspired by French painter Claude Monet (1840–1926). Circling the room, they confront smaller works on paper within the installation Mesmerizing Beauty. Placed on white garden chairs, these works flood from the centre of the room. Murillo’s expressive strokes of oil paint flow around the space, mirroring his curved interactive structures in the Turbine Hall.

Many of the paintings carry the subtitle ‘social cataracts’. This references Monet’s experience of cataracts, an eye condition that causes blurry vision and eventually blindness. During this time, Monet painted his celebrated Water Lilies paintings. Murillo is fascinated by the beauty of these artworks, created despite Monet’s loss of sight. He sees a similarity with the darkness experienced by Monet and the way people can be ‘socially blind’ – unable to truly understand one another. Through the installation, Murillo explores the idea that ‘we are in this kind of blinded existence, the façade of beauty’.

This display is part of Murillo’s installation The flooded garden in the Turbine Hall. Everyone is invited to pick up a paintbrush to create a collective painting inspired by Murillo’s work.

Part of UNIQLO Tate Play.