Michaël Borremans: French Painting

David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Belgian artist Michaël Borremans (b. 1963), taking place at the gallery’s Paris location. Borremans creates meticulously composed works that resist immediate interpretation and defy the illusion of stability and the reliability of representation, redefining the possibilities of contemporary painting through the union of technical mastery and disquieting imagery. With a distinct tension that has a haunting relevance in our time, Borremans engages in his work timeless human concerns: power, vulnerability, ambiguity, and identity, probing the instability of meaning itself. French Painting unfolds as an ironic homage to the French pictorial tradition, subtly unsettling its legacy. Across the works in this exhibition, beauty emerges as both seductive and disturbing, suspended between tenderness and nihilism.

French Painting will be the artist’s ninth solo presentation with David Zwirner. In 2024, A Confrontation at the Zoo, a comprehensive solo exhibition, was presented at Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, the Netherlands. The same year, Prada Rong Zhai opened Michaël Borremans: The Promise, installed in a 1918 historic home in the Jing’an district of Shanghai, and David Zwirner London presented Michaël Borremans: The Monkey.