Michaël Borremans. Whistling a Happy Tune

Drawings/Tekeningen SOLD OUT!

Michael Amy

The drawings, which form an oeuvre in themselves, are a way for Michael Borremans to reflect, to set the imagination in motion, and to elaborate ideas. They are often a sort of exploration of ideas for sculptures, décors, and even architecture. They show projects that will probably never be implemented, but the ideas are visualised through the drawings.
Like his paintings, Borremans’ drawings look like solidified fragments of an indeterminate and elusive time. They introduce the viewer to a sombre universe, devoid of bright colours, in which characters do strange things or carry out bizarre rituals with a certain resignation. His detailed décors involve us in complex, surrealist scenarios that are set in an ambiguous world.
For his drawings, which are relatively small and on which he works for a very long time, Borremans often derives inspiration from newspapers, books, magazines and photographic archives from the first half of the twentieth century. He prises visual elements loose from their original context by zooming in on details, combining objects from disparate sources, or representing them all on a different scale. He plays with references, omits some elements or adds others. Borremans combines pencil, watercolour, ballpoint, white ink and washes with coffee or a touch of oil paint to create his subversive and contradiction-riddled universe.
This book presents the world of Michael Borremans. A world of metaphors. An intriguing world.