Oscar Murillo’s Visionary Solo Exhibition Opens in Paris

David Zwirner is pleased to present a remarkable solo exhibition devoted to the visionary practice of Oscar Murillo, a sculptor and painter whose work pulses with the accumulated energy of labour, memory and collective witness. Opening in October at the gallery’s Paris location, ‘Unfinished thinking: Paintings and Social Maps’ offers an immersive encounter with Murillo’s distinctive visual language, a language born from profound engagement with people, places and the intricate geographies that shape our shared experience.

Murillo’s practice moves across continents and cultures with extraordinary sensitivity. His paintings operate as complex fields of mark making, surfaces layered with the residue of human presence and emotional intensity. Colour becomes utterance; line becomes protest; the accumulation of gestural marks traces what the artist describes as the scars of both terrain and people. Within these compositions, one encounters the echoes of Colombia, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Poland and Germany, a spiritual cartography that speaks to the universal dimensions of labour and community.

The works on view embrace what Murillo articulates as ‘unfinished thinking’, a conceptual framework that privileges process, acceleration and the streaming of unconscious thought. Time collapses within these paintings; frenetic energy converges with meditative depth. The artist harnesses colour not as decoration but as manifestation of spirit, a visual articulation of profound emotion that encompasses both euphoria and resistance, love and witness.

A Field of Spirits

Central to this exhibition is Murillo’s commitment to the collective, what he describes as a field of spirits perpetually in motion. His paintings refuse singular interpretation; instead, they embrace multiplicity, inviting viewers to inhabit a space where personal and political converge, where the marks on canvas become a condensed expression of human connection across disparate geographies and lived experiences.

The social maps referenced in the exhibition title point to Murillo’s broader practice of mapping labour, community structures and the invisible networks that bind people across borders. These works represent an ambitious attempt to visualise the profound and the everyday simultaneously, to render visible the emotional and spiritual dimensions of collective human endeavour.

This presentation stands as a testament to David Zwirner’s commitment to championing artists whose work engages with fundamental questions of labour, belonging and the transformative potential of creative practice. Murillo’s vision, expressed through sumptuous colour, intricate surface detail and conceptual rigour, invites contemplation of our shared humanity and the extraordinary power of artistic witness.

Imagery courtesy of David Zwirner (@davidzwirner).