OSCAR MURILLO (b. 1986, La Paila, Colombia) has developed a multifaceted and challenging practice that spans painting, collaborative projects, video, sound and installation. Through each body of work, the artist probes ideas of collectivity and shared culture, demonstrating a commitment to the power of material presence alongside complex meditations on contemporary society.

A focus on the social dimension that sits on the border between performance and events is also central to Murillo’s practice. He often invites collaborators to participate in generative moments of collective energy: creating vast collaborative paintings with over 70,000 participants in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, walking through New York or travelling between UK cities carrying mateos (traditional papier-mâché figures made in Colombia), hosting a cleaners’ party at the Serpentine Gallery, painting swathes of linen black in community centres, or holding a runway performance, open to the public, in a 14th century building in Venice. Each of these projects point to a perpetual curiosity into global social and economic exchange, community, and collaboration.

Murillo’s paintings spring from this same source of collectivity. Spanning the last 15 years, the bodies of work on view at Murillo’s inaugural show with kurimanzutto gallery are composite grounds, not just in the literal sense, but conceptually too. Often made from pieces of canvas that have inhabited the studio over long periods of time or canvases from the artist’s Frequencies archive, each work is then woven together by a combination of pigment, words and gesture. These ingredients are layered atop one another in a series of marks, traces and impressions often made through physically printing one painting onto another. The result is a series of binaries: line next to gesture, pigment next to canvas, blue next to red, abundance next to scarcity, intuition next to chance. 

These works echo the thread of participation that flows throughout Murillo’s life and work, his paintings are an embodiment of the negotiation with material that Murillo invites people to take part in. And, in turn, an embodiment of our negotiation with life; how we approach and retreat, stumble and stride with no linearity. 

Recent solo presentations include Espíritus en el pantano, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City and Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey (2025); The flooded garden, Tate Modern, London (2024); Masses, WIELS, Brussels, Belgium (2024); and Together in Our Spirits, Fundação Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2023-24). Other past solo exhibitions have been held at KM21, The Hague, Netherlands (2021-22), Fondazione Memmo, Rome, Italy (2021-22), Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, UK (2019); and Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2017-18). In 2019, Murillo was one of four artists to collectively win the prestigious Turner Prize. His works are held in numerous public collections  including Tate, Kunstmuseum den Haag, Fondation Louis Vuitton and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Murillo earned his BFA at the University of Westminster in 2007 and his MFA from the Royal College of Art in 2012. In 2023 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Westminster.