Interview with Michaël Borremans: Painting is a window on an imaginary other world


The Chinese version is published on NUMERO CHINA 78, April 2018. / Interview & translation by Yiping Lin

Fire from the Sun ©David Zwirner 

Numéro China: Why is the series entitled “Fire from the Sun”, while the sun is actually absent from the interior setting?

Michaël Borremans: In this exhibition I am looking at cannibalism in conjunction with the innocence of children as a metaphor for my views and ideas of the current state of humanity. The title deliberately references the source of all creation in this world in order to highlight the juxtaposition of the primal and the animalistic, with the cultural and the cultivated that is central to the visual tensions in the exhibition.

“Fire from the Sun” resembles one of your earlier series “Black Mould” thematically and visually. While “Black Mould” features groups of cult-like adult fanatics in black hoods, “Fire” presents naked little boys at a really young age, who seem barely capable of walking, let alone speaking or socializing, to be painted in blood and indulging in amputating, killing each other and playing with anonymous body parts. It is not often that your characters are so peculiarly young – can you tell us how you came to conceive this series? Why do you choose to paint a series on toddlers?

The idea of using children as the main subject for "Fire from the Sun" came about by accident. At first I wanted to work with naked adolescents or kids in their early teens. They were very hard to convince to pose nude and let go of their inhibitions, so my girlfriend suggested I should work with much younger children because they are more spontaneous in that way. And yes, it worked out very well. The fact that they were toddlers added another dimension and layer of meaning to the initial idea.

Like in “Black Mould”, the background in the paintings looks like the curtain of a theatre, while the chiaroscuro sets up an expressionist, moody, morbid tone for the violent acts. Can you share with us some thoughts on the design of this theatric quality in your painting? Previously you have incorporated sculpture and cinema in some of your works, what are your thoughts on the relationship between theatre and painting?

I wanted to have the same neutral backdrop for every scenery in order to point out that it was staged and very artificial, as if they are part of a theatre or film set.

You were originally trained as a photographer; your father was a photographer, and so is your wife. How did you veer your career to painting? How would you describe the impact photography has on your creative career?

I’m not a social person and if you’re a photographer you have to come out and be social and it wasn’t for me. I’m the type of artist who likes to stay in and be in my own world.

I have experimented with different media, and I still do, but I found out that painting is the most efficient medium to use for me to produce the imagery I want to create. Partly because it is a very primitive tool and it is irreplaceable; the time it takes to build up the painting with paint is an important element in the production too. Newer media like photography or even digital media have their advantages too, but the process of painting is much more suitable to me.

However, I still take photos, and it’s actually very important for my painting as well. For example, for the Fire from the Sun series, I invited these toddlers to the studio with their parents and took photos of them playing in front of the backdrop. I then use these photos as the inspiration for this seires of paintings. The paintings are not exactly what the photos are, because we compose the paintings with kids from different photos. It’s like playing chess, as I decide where to put each kid in the composition of the painting. Sometimes after I painted a figure, I decided to take it out. That’s why there are some ghost-like figures left on the painting, which is unexpected, but I do like it.

You have cited inspirations from Velázquez and Manet, and your works have been compared to Goya, Degas and some Flemish artists. Can you comment on how these artists have helped shape your vision on the art of oil painting?

I'm sure they do but this doesn't happen consciously or directly. They are part of my cultural background and always have been very present in my visual education.

I don’t refer to these things intentionally—the references are there in all my work. There are references to the history of art that are not specific. They appeal to your consciousness in a very open way. It’s something I think about. All the imagery of the 20th century and earlier is baggage we have to deal with. My work is an answer to that, a dialogue with that.


Apparatus (II) ©David Zwirner


Among the toddlers there are two other paintings from another series “The Apparatus”. While they are machines that can be used to process and kill, the word “apparatus” is also associated with the theorization of ideology. Why are these two paintings selected for this exhibition? Are there any intended implications?

I wanted the machines in the group of works to create a thematic contrast in order to make the expression stronger; it is about the primal and the animalism opposed to the cultural and the cultivated. It is important to have this contrast in communication of the works both as a theme for the show as for the visual tension in the exhibition.

The sensations these paintings evoke are complicated and evasive. Yet at the same time they are characterized by a remarkable simplicity, like in your other works, with a really economic use of colors, unsophisticated composition, and among others an unambiguous sense of melancholia. Which reminds me of Edgar Allen Poe who regards melancholia as “the most legitimate of all poetic tones”. Would you call yourself a melancholic person at heart? What are you trying to convey to the world by means of painting?

To me the painting is still the same thing as I saw it when I was a child: a window on an imaginary other world.

In the documentary “Michaël Borremans: A Knife in the Eye” we came to know that you play guitar in a band! And you sing, too. The music feels much more direct and closer to our immediate reality than your paintings. We also hear the songs of Tom Waits, among others, on the soundtrack of the documentary, which works surprisingly (or maybe not surprising at all) well with the film. What kind of music/what musicians do you like? What is the place of music in your life?

I still create music sometimes, for example my friend recently film me painting the Fire from the Sun series at my studio, and I created a music specifically for this video.

I play guitar to focus my mind and relax, because sometimes I found myself in a bad mood for painting, then I pick up the guitar and play. I play guitar not very well, so I have to be very focused on my hand when playing, and that’s also why it clears my mind from other things, and it just feels relaxing.

Are there any writers or philosophers that you will regard as important for you, personally and/or creatively?

I have always been inspired by motion pictures; all kinds of genres if they are visually stimulating. I have always been a great admirer of Hitchcock, Bunuel, Tarkovsky, Fritz Lang, David Lynch. Unfortunately I have little time to read, but I used to read a lot in the beginning of my career. Some of my favorite writers are Witold Gombrowicz, Georges Perec, Vladimir Nabokov and W. G. Sebald. I like Neil Young and Jockum Nordström (Swedish artist) a lot. I have recently started buying and playing LP's again and this really enhances the listening experience. I'm sure all of the arts I like influence my work on a subconscious level.
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