Paintings2009

"Bathing his subjects in an austere light, and rendering them with strong, confident brushwork, Michael Borremans executes paintings that seduce and hold at bay, keeping the history of art in dialogue while committing wholly to the iconography of our time. The protagonists of these works, derived from pictures in magazines or scientific books, are captured while engaging in activities whose exact nature seems both mundane and mysterious ("they're just sitting there breathing," Borremans told an interviewer), but the artist manages to freight these protagonists, and the air around them, with great emotional tension. Similarly, his apparently sober palette of beiges, browns and greys sometimes gives way to a small flourish of brighter color--a white bow or a ruddy-cheeked face--that breaks...