5-Star Exhibition at Museum Voorlinden: Michaël Borremans – A Confrontation at the Zoo

Michaël Borremans is an artist fluent in centuries-old technical skill, yet his works speak their own contemporary language. His oeuvre spans drawing, sculpture, film, and photography, but he is best-known for his oil-on-canvas paintings, which bristle with tension between historical medium and conceptual immediacy. A trademark of Borremans’s work is his deadpan penchant for the absurd and theatrical. His subjects often appear in homemade costumes, dressed as if for the stage or ritual. Yet their expressions betray no irony or intent. In his paintings, the artist represses obvious displays of emotion—whether surprise or distress—in strange compositions deserving of them. Borremans’s reoccurring subject is the dark (and darkly funny) mess of human experience and possibility. This mess unites with the clinical precision and elegance of the artist’s craft, fine-tuned to the exhilarating mood of each painting.

‘My paintings always differ from what I had pictured. This element of chance appears in each work, and between them. What’s missing in one, appears in another. In this exhibition you can see how the paintings help each other.’ – Michaël Borremans

Fire from the Sun, 2017 | Collection Voorlinden

Together with the artist, museum Voorlinden brings together nearly fifty paintings on canvas from the past twenty years in A Confrontation at the Zoo. The solo exhibition unfolds as a thematic anthology of his oeuvre, with galleries dedicated to his early works, portrayals of people, animals and objects, and series such as Fire from the Sun (2017). Among the prominent paintings on display is The Monkey (2023), which depicts a porcelain monkey in human clothes. Part of the Voorlinden collection, this painting taps into an important thematic obsession for the artist: how humans portray themselves. In this signature work, Borremans gives the weight of history, portraiture, and importance to a seemingly insignificant and disposable object, as if to say: this, too, is a human portrayal.

‘Michaël Borremans seduces you with his old-master’s skill, then makes you stumble upon his surreal content.’ – Suzanne Swarts, director Voorlinden

Sleeper, 2008 | Private collection Frank & Eliane Demaegd-Breynaert | Photo Maris Hutchinson

Michaël Borremans was born in 1963 in Geraardsbergen, Belgium, and in 1996 he received his M.F.A. from Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst, Campus St. Lucas, in Ghent, followed by several years of photography. After a sabbatical from teaching, he started to paint at the age of 33. The Belgian artist is now one of the most renowned and sought-after contemporary artists of his generation – The New York Times calls him ‘the greatest living figurative painter’. His work is exhibited all over the world, with comprehensive solo shows presented from Dallas to Japan. Voorlinden has been following the artist for years and has several works in its collection. Borremans lives and works in Ghent.

Main Image: Michaël Borremans, The Talent, 2023 | Private collection | Photo Cedric Verhelst