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Belgian artist Michael Borremans has created a renowned body of work, acclaimed both for its
mastery of the mediums of drawing and paintingand for the surreal and unsettling world he uses
them to evoke.

All of Borremans work shares a sense of ambiguity and melancholy, with elements of the bizarre
creeping into what at first seems like a technically startling, yet straightforward realism. Through
imagery harkening back to an undatable pastthough there are hints of the 1940sBorremans
creates an austere and oppressive world where things become more and more disturbing the deeper
you look.

His second solo show at New Yorks David Zwirner gallery shows Borremans working with a more
contemporary mise-en-scene. In these new paintings, drawn from photographs the artist composed
himself, Borremans turns to larger-scale formats as well as to exploring the genre of portraiture. In
doing so, he also turns to the history of painting, through references to the style of masters like
Goya, Velazquez and Chardin.

Ive always been struck by the tension in your work between your technical virtuosity and the
realism in the paintings, and this unsettling, surreal world they suggest

All of that creates a kind of psychological impact that is interesting. Its kind of conceptual in a way.
We all deal with images as a language, we all respond to these codes, but I fuck these codes up
that whats I do. Following the elements in a work usually leads to something, leads to a solution. In
my work, it fails to do that. You have within the imagery a kind of ideological failure is how I put
it. I look out for that, I mess around with it, because I think it makes you question not only an art
work, but also an image, and with that reality and truth. You know: Does truth exist? What is it?

Is that why youre drawn to this uncanny world filled with an ambiguous past? Youve
frequently used some dark imagery out of the 1940s

In these new paintings, Ive tried to avoid it. But there are several reasons why Ive used that type
of imagery. For one, I didnt want there to be an individual in the paintings. In my paintings, there
are no individuals, theyre just types, stereotypes, two-dimensional images. Theyre human beings
in their symbolic quality, like the pieces in a chess gamethey stand for something. I also wanted
to avoid showing contemporary people because I think that has an anecdotal connotation, which
wasnt useful for me because I wanted to depict this very general, 20th-century man.

So I took the image of man in the middle of the 20th century. Thats an interesting period, of course,
because you had the War then, and there was this time from the 1930s to the 1960s with tremendous
change in society and in life. Therefore, its fairly significant, especially in the way we look back it,
which is why I wanted to use that imagery.

It was also to erase time a bit, to make it general. But I found out that the imagery also has an
aesthetic quality and that perhaps that quality was too dominant sometimes, and the work was
appreciated mostly for that. That disturbed me, which is why Im seeking a more efficient way to
work out my concepts.

In changing to a more contemporary imagery, youve also harkened back to Velazquez and
Manet and even Chardinin doing these new portraits for example.
Thats a form of dialogue with tradition in painting. But of course the portraits are not real portraits.
Theyre not about people that are depicted, or making a characteristic image of them that speaks for
what they are. I just use this exterior form of a portrait so that you have certain expectations of it,
but it doesnt really work like a portrait. It doesnt reveal anything or go where wed expect it would
go. So on the surface you have a portrait, but the content of it is just not there. Theres nothing
there.

Theres this amazing quality to the paint

Yes, but thats another aspect of the work. I think an interesting work of artwhatever it is, whether
its film or literatureshould have a whole range of qualities, and therefore you can appreciate it
for very different reasons and from very different angles. Good art needs that. In a lot of 20th-
century art, you have this focus on only certain aspects of art, and it was a very interesting period
for that. But thats finished now. Thats why I think Im a very subversive and revolutionary artist
[laughs]. An artist has to be convinced of that: Its not pretentious, its not arrogance, its a
responsibility.

You know, art is always a testimony, is always witnessing its time. When you look in the past, its
always the art that tells the story, really. Its the thing that remains, and we should not underestimate
it.

Is a sense of being culturally haunted by the Second World War part of the imagery in your
painting?

Well as you know, and its a clich of course, that every work of an artist is a kind of self-portrait.
And of course this period has an influence on me, because when I was little in the 1960s and 1970s,
older people only talked about the war. It was really present still. It wasnt that long ago. All my
aunts and my grandfather and grandmother had all these stories about the war. As a child, that was a
tremendous influence.

This dialogue with tradition in painting you mentionedis this continuity of tradition part of
what you find productive in painting?

I started painting kind of late. I was in my early 30s. I did drawing before and did work in graphic
media. I always wanted to paint but I never dared to do it. I never found my way in it. I tried from
time to time. But Ive always been interested in the medium. Now, the more I paint, I cant stop
anymore.

One of the reasons I consciously chose to work in painting is that you cant use it only as a medium.
It has this historical connotation, and either you want [that connotation] or you dont want it. So if
you paint, you should make use of that. Its inherent to the medium, and its very important. If you
dont want it, take another medium. Its as simple as that. Therefore this dialogue with other
painting is to me very essential.

It also has to do with another aspect of the medium of painting: Good painting is always
contemporary in a way. I just came from MoMA, from the Munch showhes not my favorite
painterbut his paintings are concretely there. Theyre mental things, theyre not objects. They
have this mental vibration, and they are here now. A painting is always now. When I see a self-
portrait by Rembrandt, and its well conserved, it looks like it was painted yesterday. Theres this
leveling of time, this erasing of time.
You mentioned starting in drawing, which is also a major facet of your work. Do you see
drawing and painting as distinct projects?

There are similarities, thematically, between my drawing and my painting, but they are different
things, because they have a different function for me. The drawings are more literal, the putting on
paper of ideas really. Painting is a more passionate thing. Theres much more risk in it. Theres me
and theres the painting, and we have to come together in a way. Drawing is my medium, I control it
much better. The painting I dont control that much. Its like a mistress.

But your paintings are so assured, the technique is so assured

Thats how its got to look [laughs]. I always think I can do better. Thats why sometimes I have to
postpone a showI postponed this show three times. Sometimes, mentally, Im just not finished
with a group of works, and I often make the same painting several times, just to see if I can do it
better.

Theres an example of that in the new show, with these two paintings of a mans legs

Yes, but in that case they were both interesting. Thats why I made a diptych out of it, because it
gives something more to the whole. It was an interesting accident.

Lets go back to the drawings. You tend to work on very intimate materialenvelopes,
passepartoutsmaterials that arent necessarily traditional drawing mediums.

What has always fascinated me about drawing since I was a child is that you can, on an envelope or
whatever, evoke a complete world. You are god. That has always been completely striking for me. I
can do anything, and I dont harm anyone.

But your drawings and paintings are often about seemingly harmful experiences, or about
being controlled.

Yes, but whats wrong with that? Its all around us. In fact, its less there in my work than in the real
world. Thats part the romantic element to the imagery, too, in the sense thats theres no way out,
that were all prisonersI mistrust institutions. Its like Caspar David Friedrich. He used nature as a
metaphor; I work in the interior.

You also work from photographs; what do you think has been so productive to a whole
generation of painters about translating a photographic image into the medium of painting?

Well, you have to be able to deal with it. A lot of painters stay too close to the photograph, and its
clear when you see the work. You have to leave the photograph, to manipulate it a bit. And the
photograph doesnt have to be interesting; its the painting that has to be interesting. I never use a
good photograph because thats finished. When you have good photograph you cannot improve it
anymore. So I always work from an image that has a lot of shortcomings. Then I have a feeling that
I am creative, that I am changing the original image.

And since photography has been there it has been an aid for artists, a device for painters. You dont
have to have a model standing all day in your studio, although that gives a different kind of
painting. I paint from nature as well from time to time. Its important to do that. When I paint in
small formats, I often do it from nature.
You mostly work in small scaleexcept for this huge painting in the new show. Is that
influenced by your training as an etcher?

Its practicalsuch a big painting like The Avoider is not practical. Im a pragmatic person. Painters
mostly are, because its a medium for pragmatists. You dont need muchwith drawing even more
so. Sometimes an artist has to rebuild a whole museum, and I can get the same impact on a small
page.

Ive also been experimenting with film, small 35mm loops. Film is not a pragmatic medium, but its
actually very close to what Im doing in painting. The relationship between painting and film is
much closer than painting and photography. Painting to me is a moving image when its painted
well. To me theres a connection, and experimenting with film is a very obvious thing to doit
comes out of the painting.