INFERNO

Oscar Murillo “We Don’t Work Sundays” / Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris / jusqu’au 18 juillet 2014.

Marian Goodman Gallery Paris is presents Oscar Murillo’s first solo exhibition in France. “We Don’t Work Sundays” is the third of the Colombian-born British artist’s trilogy of recent exhibitions, at the south London Gallery and The Mistake Room in Los Angeles, dwelling on the aesthetics of shared labour. This exhibition incorporates the full spectrum of his practice, including new paintings, drawings on paper, sculptures and a video projection.

Shaped by Murillo’s interest in the meanings behind object-making outside of artistic production, much of this exhibition is derived from what some working-class Colombians create in anticipation of their leisure activities. And, as with his previous projects, Murillo has engineered collaborations between incongruous groups, leading to works that counter the social hierarchies and cultural displacement he’s experienced.

“My life itself has been about labour and physicality, and manipulating materials in a physical way. Those experiences definitely inform my relationship to [art]….Regardless of the idea of segregated societies, via economic status or social class, we are segregated individuals by default. I think a lot about this and how art fits into it…Any opportunity of artistic achievement comes with an opportunity to infiltrate a social class that is closely linked to art–art making, art appreciating, etc. I personally entered foreign territories with these opportunities. Since then I’ve wanted other individuals to be part of this experience…” (Oscar Murillo interviewed by Cesar Garcia, in L’Officiel Art, March 2014.)

The premise for “We Don’t Work Sundays” lay in Murillo’s conversation with a group of Afro-Colombian amateur musicians who’d created their own basic instruments: his principal interest being that they were objects made for an entirely recreational and social, not financially motivated purpose. This encounter led to him musing on what people of all cultures make and do in preparation for life outside of employment: the labour they invest in not-working.

Each year, the western Colombian city of Cali – known colloquially as the “Capital de la Salsa” – hosts the Feria de Cali, a festival of carnival parades, athletic and equine events, and a salsa marathon, engendering ethnic and cultural diversity in the region. Residents spend months creating costumes and rehearsing dances in preparation for the week’s events. For this exhibition, Murillo collaborated with fashion students from l’Ecole Duperré (Ecole supérieure des arts appliqués Paris), first showing them his video of the amateur musicians, then inviting them to revisit Feria de Cali costumes through their own haute couture experience, and hanging their reinvented garments in his show.

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Copyright Oscar Murillo / Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris