Michaël Borremans: The Promise
Before artist Michaël Borremans’ upcoming exhibition in Hong Kong in May 2024, a small exhibition including selected works from his previous series was quietly opened in Prada Rongzhai in Shanghai. It is not uncommon for international commercial blue-chip galleries to install another show in the region to let potential buyers familiarize themselves with the artist’s oeuvre. These exhibitions often highlight the most important pieces from the artist’s career and provide ample information to situation them within the institution of art history. In this case, however, the exhibited works are surprisingly modest, if not obscure. While showing one of Borremans’ earliest works, Sunset (2002), and some of his latest that were created in 2020 and 2021, this survey emits works from his signature London exhibition, Black Mound (2015), or his most recent and successful show, The Acrobat (2022), opened in New York. Instead, many of the pieces are loans from private collections. In the elaborated brochure printed by Rongzhai, a few collectors’ names and locations are identified, effectively consolidating provenance information and increasing the perceived values of these paintings. Therefore, one can’t help but wonder whether the works included in this exhibition will emerge in auctions or private sales in the foreseeable future. Alternatively, the lack of important works could also be due to the severe censorship in Shanghai and the large amount of funds and effort that are necessary to maneuver those works.
In terms of subject matter, The Promise proves to be carefully curated. It includes the artist’s most recognized figure portraitures and colored cones and one of the artist’s video installations created before he became a painter, The Storm (2002), which occupies an entire ballroom. However, it also includes paintings that depict random objects that seem to belong to a refined household, such as Book (2004) and Mask (2008), and ominous subjects that suggest violence and destruction, such as Missile (2017) and The Merry Missile (2020). In addition, upon stepping inside a transitional room after entering the exhibition, a painting entitled Alien (2008) is hung on a wall next to the entrance to another gallery space. As many viewers have pointed out, it is impossible to overlook this work. Featuring the enormous head of an otherworldly creature, the painter provides ample details to frighten whoever lays eyes upon it. Instead of any facial features, this head is covered with numerous pods that are either inlaid in its many holes or grow out of them. It provokes an uncomfortable visceral feeling in the viewers, who, for a moment, feel as if their own faces are encroached upon by numerous pods. Thoughtfully installed throughout the spacious Rongzhai, these paintings become the elaborated house’s occupants, witnesses, or pieces of memory. Together, they seem to present a sinister secret history or a coded esoteric narrative. However, it is unclear who is promising whom about what.
The image chosen as the exhibition's postcard, Mask (2008), offers no clue about the nature of the promise. Similar to the Japanese Noh mask, the subject of this painting is saturated with different emotions when appreciating from different angles. Against a light brown undertone, Borremans painted an ambiguous, almost abstract facial expression. With forceful calligraphic brushstrokes, he delineates the eyebrows and the upper lids of the eyes and eyeshadow in dabs of light greenish blue as if the figure is looking upward. The scarlet half-opened its mouth, the rose-colored blushes on the cheek, and scattered white dots dropping from the eyes to the chin, a vertical line, fix the figure in a perpetual moment of tension on the verge of an emotional outbreak. Its ambivalence leads to multiple possible interpretations. She could be in the middle of a plea, crying out despair, or just suffering in silence, speechless. The tension and urgency freeze, yet on the right side or the rear side of the face, depending on from which angle you see the picture, the painter painted another face, calm and grave, beneath the figure on the surface. With a few brownish strokes, the artist evokes a closed eye with a relaxed eyebrow as if the figure is meditating or contemplating the problem with a peaceful mind. It is difficult to tell which is the mask and which is the authentic person behind its guise. They could be both real or both belying.
The emotive mask is in sharp contrast with the other portraits included in this exhibition, which are all figure paintings of a sole and quiet protagonist. They either turn their backs toward the viewer or concentrate on some other solitary tasks, and none show the slightest desire to communicate with anyone or are aware of any others’ presence, be it the voyeuristic viewers outside of the frames or someone in their own mystic world. In A2 (2004), a woman in a white shirt and dark hair in a low bun turns to face a corner in a room. A fainted shadow of her bust is projected on the wall in front of her. Her dark brown dress merges with the floor in a similar color. Without seeing her face, we feel that she is lost in thought, maybe contemplating a dilemma or trying to figure out a way out of a tricky situation. However, the viewer intuitively feels that she was not only musing about some enjoyable moments from her memory or planning for a jubilant event in the future. Not only because of the dark and funeral tone exuded from the black, grey, and brown paint that spread through the depicted space, but also because of the close proximity between her and the wall. Her shoulders are relaxed, indicating that she is alone or thinks she is alone, and it is unnecessary to perform any courteous duties to entertain a guest or reassure an intimate person that she is indeed “fine.” Yet she deliberately seeks to hide herself, to keep her vulnerable moments private, and to find a shelter that not only blocks others from seeing her face but also provides an external screen, that is, the walls, where she can project her thoughts. In a way, she is having a conversation with her own shadow cast in front of her. She might be negotiating with herself about a promise she made long ago and never fulfilled, or trying to establish a promise that her real self desires but is too afraid to name it.
Matching her solitude, the girl in The Ear (2011) also committed herself to face the wall closely with only her own shadow to look at and speak with. Wearing her hair in a messy bud and a gossamery silky white top, she seems to be overdressed for a solitary thinking session. The painter highlights her pinkish left ear, showing under her thick hair as her sole connection with a world external to her inner thoughts. She may have deliberately left this faculty acute, waiting for some news to release her from grief, waiting, or trouble, possibly a miraculous fulfillment of a promise from another person. Similarly, in Still (2005), a man with slick, well-trimmed gold hair is facing a drapery, and his head is cast downward in a classic contemplating posture. His black suit suggests that he might be on his way to attend a serious meeting or solemn event or just returned from one. He may have just received some disturbing news and is trying to process it in silence. However, the quietness in these scenes only communicates the gravity of these figures’ situations, as if they have sucked all the energy from them and all they have left are the empty shell of their corporeal body.
However, Michaël Borremans also proves his painterly virtuosity by depicting solemnity in bright, scorching sunlight. In Racer (2012) and The Purse (2020), painted 8 years apart, he employs a similar composition where a topless male figure looks down on something in their hands with uttermost focus. However, their respective subjects cannot be more distinct. The racer illustrates male masculinity by depicting a lean young man with a tight six-pack drawing floral patterns on a reddish background. The perfect combination of art and sports, brain and body, and tenderness and strength. This might be his hobby, but his sheer concentration draws the viewers in and slows them down. Yet his naked body remains a seduction and an invitation for intrusion and maybe even possession. On the other hand, the protagonist in The Purse (2020) is a young boy with shining golden hair that stylishly falls on one side of his forehead. He is looking intensely at a green purse he is holding in his hands. The woven leather seems to suggest this is a Bottega Veneta bag, meaning it is worth quite a sum of cash. It might belong to someone he knows, such as his mother, or some wealthy stranger in his circle mindlessly left it behind. Nonetheless, the boy is lost in his thoughts, and his facial expression cannot be more nonchalant. Maybe he is contemplating whether to return it to its rightful owner or drop it where he found it. Either way, he could not care less. He seems to be less interested in what the bag held inside than its physical form and color. In contrast to the racer, his boyish innocence and purity are highlighted. The symbolic value and status embodied by the bag have not tainted his thoughts yet. If the racer is extending a quiet, seductive allure, then the boy is immune to temptation.
While the figure paintings depict various emotions and private moments that are common to humanity, the exhibition also includes portraits of a single missile scattered throughout the space, in between figures and landscapes. Like the solitary people in the abovementioned paintings, missiles stay quietly in empty spaces. They are not menacing but certainly hold much power, promising to annihilate everything when necessary. Different from the ambivalent, absent-minded people, their functions are the only thing that is definite. Without their demolishing purpose, they wouldn’t exist. For some, they promise a new beginning, and for others, they are a no-return button to complete self-destruction. However, it is not clear who gets to call the shot and what constitutes such a necessity. Alternatively, the silent figures might be survivors in the aftermath of these missiles’ explosions, mourning not only the lost but also the undelivered promise.
