Acquired directly from the artist bythe present owner, 2009
Catalogue Essay
The cast concrete ball sculpture has become a staple within the artistic practice of Oscar Murillo. Growing up in Colombia and immigrating to London with his family, Murillo was an avid soccer player. This lifelong affinity is represented in the spherical shape of the present lot—the intricate layering and texture of the surface recall the corporeal gestures the artist left behind on the soccer field. This symbolic sense of motion has become central to the artist’s physically demanding working method, yielding the performative aspects of his studio process.
In creating this work, Murillo incorporated paper, pulped drawings and other forms of detritus from his studio into the concrete mold, instilling within the piece a strong reference to the autobiographical. The industrial medium of concrete is a symbolic representation of strength and progress, solidifying the personal aspects of the artist’s work and imbuing them with allusions to his urban environment.
These sculptures that were created as individual works have been transposed and reconsidered as a collective grouping of objects, such as in social anomalies from a candy factory, 2013, in which the concrete balls reference lollypops (chalupas) made in a Colombian candy factory. This particular factory and its workers appear in a video titled welcome to the members club, in which the production process and social connections of the workers are revealed. Murillo’s ability to capture a sense of movement, identity and culture in his works form the basis of comparisons to the likes of Jean Michel Basquiat. The present lot, an early example of his sculptural work, is vital to the understanding of his artistic practice as a whole. The crusted seam appears like the equator on a globe, and the colored surfaces float like vibrant continents colliding with one another above the nuances occurring within the concrete surface. The work is exemplary to the extent that it illustrates Murillo’s conceptual development, foreshadowing the hypergestural artistic practice that has followed.