Artists in the News
July 5, 2021
On view through August 30 at the Cardinal Pole Catholic School in London, Artangel presents Oscar Murillo’s Frequencies (2013–), the artist’s ongoing international project inviting students aged 10–16 to freely draw on canvases. All 40,000 canvases will be displayed for the first time together in a large-scale installation in the sports hall at Cardinal Pole secondary school, where Murillo himself was a student between the ages of 11 and 18. Visitors can explore an immersive installation featuring the entire archive of canvas works in stacks, on tables, and on video screens showing artwork details.
Murillo’s non-profit organization, The Frequencies Foundation, has a new instagram account. To be updated on the Frequencies project and archive, follow @frequenciesfoundation.

A canvas from the Frequencies project
On view through at sonsbeek in The Netherlands, the 12th edition of the quadrennial, titled Force Times Distance: On Labour and its Sonic Ecologies, features Murillo’s installation Human Resources and painting titled disrupted frequencies. Anna Pigott writes, “Each individual painting’s title contains the names of the countries its component canvases came from, deliberately creating tension through the splicing together of objects from different geographical, social and cultural contexts.”


Installation view, MAM Project 029: Oscar Murillo, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2021. Photo by Furukawa Yuya
On view through September 26 at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, MAM Project 029: Oscar Murillo presents Frequencies (2013–), an ongoing international project initiated by Murillo and political scientist Clara Dublanc. This solo exhibition also presents a selection of canvases from other countries, including Colombia, India, China, the United States, Lebanon, and Kenya.
On view through October 24 at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Murillo’s, manifestation (2019–2020) is in Anne Imhof’s group show, Natures Mortes, alongside various paintings, drawings, sculptures, music installations, and performances as part of the museum’s Carte Blanche series. Works by fellow gallery artists Joan Mitchell, Sigmar Polke, and Wolfgang Tillmans are also included.
Forthcoming in September 2021, Murillo’s book project By Means of a Detour explores the artist’s life and travels in 2019, from Croatia to New York, Berlin and beyond. The book was designed by the artist's long-time collaborator, Olu Odukoya, a London-based creative director. Murillo writes: “This book was created to capture 2019. A year of my life, and the culmination of the first ten years of an art practice, of constant travel, of research, of making and work. Finding myself in Zagreb, Croatia, arriving from New York in the crazy cold and getting sick and traveling straight to Berlin to do a show…”

Oscar Murillo, By Means of a Detour, 2021
Cover image: Installation view, MAM Project 029: Oscar Murillo, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2021. Photo by Furukawa Yuya