Michaël Borremans: The Elegance of the Unsettling

The Uncanny World of Stillness, Mystery, and Masterful Craftsmanship

Michaël Borremans is an artist whose work draws viewers in with its classical beauty, only to leave them with an unsettling sense of ambiguity. Known for his meticulously painted, enigmatic scenes, Borremans’ art occupies a liminal space between reality and fiction, familiarity and disquiet. His works feel as if they belong to another time, borrowing from the old masters while speaking to modern sensibilities. Today, let’s journey into Borremans’ uncanny universe and explore what makes his paintings so captivating, complex, and profoundly mysterious.

Michael Borremans - Fire from the Sun (Four Figures)

The Language of Stillness: From Filmmaker to Painter

Borremans, born in 1963 in Geraardsbergen, Belgium, began his career in art relatively late, originally training as a photographer and filmmaker before transitioning to painting in the 1990s. This background in cinema and photography is evident in his works; his paintings often feel as though they are stills from a film, fragments of a story whose beginning and end remain unknown. His use of lighting, composition, and perspective all contribute to the cinematic quality of his pieces, lending them an air of narrative possibility that is left tantalizingly incomplete.

The influence of historical art on Borremans is unmistakable. His works echo the muted tones and chiaroscuro lighting of the Old Masters, evoking a sense of timelessness. Artists like Velázquez, Goya, and Manet are clear influences, not just in technique but also in the sense of psychological depth that Borremans brings to his subjects. Yet while his craftsmanship is rooted in tradition, his imagery is distinctly contemporary, often unsettling, and intentionally ambiguous.

The Uncanny and the Ambiguous: Creating Unease Through Beauty

Borremans’ paintings often depict solitary figures or small groups engaged in strange, inexplicable activities. The figures are dressed in ambiguous costumes, sometimes historical, sometimes almost futuristic, and are often caught in seemingly mundane actions that hint at something deeper. In works like “The Avoider,” a figure sits at a table, their gaze averted, their expression inscrutable. What are they thinking? What just happened before this moment? The viewer is left to speculate, feeling both fascinated and uneasy.

Michael Borremans - The Avoider

There is a profound stillness in Borremans’ works, a frozen quality that invites careful examination but also heightens the tension. This stillness is a double-edged sword—it is beautiful, almost meditative, but it also feels like a trap, as if something just beneath the surface is about to break the calm. It’s this juxtaposition of elegance and unease that gives Borremans’ work its powerful psychological charge. He masterfully employs beauty to lure the viewer in, only to leave them disoriented in the face of something inexplicable.

Borremans often uses his subjects as actors in his ambiguous narratives, their expressions and gestures open to interpretation but never offering any concrete answers. The viewer becomes an investigator, piecing together fragments of a story that resists completion. The result is an experience that is both deeply engaging and strangely disquieting.

Theatricality and Ritual: A Window into Another World

The theatricality in Borremans’ work is undeniable. Many of his paintings feel like scenes from a play or ritual, caught in the middle of some obscure performance. His series “Black Mould” depicts figures wearing monochrome suits with covered faces, participating in unknown ceremonies or experiments. The anonymity of these figures adds to the mystery, stripped of individuality, they become symbols, vessels for something beyond themselves.

Michael Borremans - Black Mould

This sense of ritual, of the arcane, evokes a sense of the uncanny, a feeling that something familiar has become strange. Borremans plays with this sensation masterfully, creating works that are on the threshold between the known and the unknown, the ordinary and the extraordinary. His subjects seem to occupy a reality that is similar to ours, yet fundamentally altered, as though they have stepped out of a forgotten dream or a half-remembered story.

The Alchemy of Materials: Traditional Techniques for Modern Visions

Technically, Borremans is a virtuoso. His works demonstrate a deep understanding of traditional painting techniques, from the use of glazes to his impeccable handling of light and shadow. This technical mastery allows him to create surfaces that are rich and tactile, inviting viewers to appreciate the sheer beauty of the paint itself, even as the content of the work remains elusive.

By employing these classical techniques, Borremans connects his work to a long history of figurative painting, yet his subjects and themes are anything but traditional. This blending of the old and the new adds to the unsettling nature of his work, viewers are drawn in by the familiarity of the technique, only to be caught off guard by the strangeness of the content. It is this alchemical transformation of traditional craftsmanship into something deeply modern and psychologically charged that defines Borremans’ approach.

A Legacy of Unease and Fascination

Michaël Borremans’ work is a powerful exploration of ambiguity, a dance between the familiar and the mysterious. His paintings offer no clear narratives, no easy answers, only questions that linger in the viewer’s mind long after they have walked away. By combining traditional techniques with unsettling imagery, Borremans challenges our expectations of what figurative painting can be, creating works that are as beautiful as they are disquieting.

In the end, Borremans invites us to sit with uncertainty, to find beauty in ambiguity, and to accept that not everything can or should be explained. His work captures the complexity of the human experience—the mixture of beauty and fear, of clarity and confusion, of stillness and unease. It is this complexity that makes his art so deeply compelling, leaving viewers both enchanted and disturbed.