Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin Gifted from the above to the present owner
Catalogue Essay
In his desire to truly inhabit all realities of his environment, Murillo's Postures (New Years resolution 2011-12 series) combines a deeply expressive use of materials with a process of sedimentation. Left to fester on the studio floor, his paintings accumulate not only dust but alternative significance, their possible histories and futures coalescing in this state of productive stasis. With its untidy, fractious appearance, Postures (New Years resolution 2011-12 series) appears to have risen to the surface during the course of this accretion. Its very title is suggestive of Murillo’s performative process, in which the act of walking around his studio materially impacts his work. The word ‘Yoga’, here emblazoned in gold, has reappeared throughout Murillo’s practice for its formal qualities, but here it takes on a specific resonance in relation to the title. The artist uses language for its cultural implications and associations, asking what repressed histories words can call up. Here, underlined and beside an excised ‘10’, ‘Yoga’ registers a double performative act. Murillo’s paintings always refer outside themselves to the social activities which make up his wider practice. In its urgent use of materials and composite form Postures (New Years resolution 2011-12 series) embodies the synthesis of historical and personal, formal and performative characteristic of Murillo’s work.