Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London
20 July – 26 August 2024
What is the inaugural impulse for the undertaking? A visual transcription of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and with this a rapture of vision, or the torment that Monet experienced due to having cataracts which caused the loss or greatly diminished sight? By drawing together these two impulses, rupture and rapture, this project releases the force of visual excess in conjunction with the anxiety related to not being able to see into things, what Murillo calls the ‘social cataract’. The immersive structure of a painting forming itself out of waves of brush marks and calligraphic like inscriptions, alongside encounters with critical structures, becomes the means whereby a whole apparatus is assembled. There is a sense within this that the visual is haunted by blindness, of not being able to represent, nor to be able to put this into words. Thus, the forces released alternate between smooth continuities and striations introducing discontinuities. The play then between aesthetics and politics opens out an expanded set of possibilities for both registers based on a reconstructed notion of freedom (freedom as an eruption of sense). In this context there would be no social community without aesthetic community, no aesthetic impulse without social mediation. What is therefore assembled is close to a pulsation within the field of encounter in which energetics is the vital principle.
The idea of participation in art has generated a whole series of fascinating structures which have been drawn out of a resistance to aesthetic formalism. In particular, the confluence of artists assembled in Signals Gallery (1964-66) introduced not only a principle of participation but also as a category for thinking through social resistance with aesthetic singularity. This was coupled with a critique of neo-colonial subjectification that was articulated alongside the impulse for social emancipation. The idea in turn of Relational Aesthetics had a much more ambivalent posture and ethics in that it coupled philosophical critique of the spectacle with a collusion with globalised aesthetic structures. This was also coupled with the development of techno-aesthetic constructions which embraced the spectacular through which social legitimacy can be claimed by the sponsoring venues. Artists are then required to construct a subtle and sophisticated approach to how and where they partake within these corporate structures which couple pleasure with social control. Politics is not just the procession of speech acts, but an appeal to the combination of soft persuasive gestures, repetition of half-truths, seductions, strategies, and hard structures of repression, all entangled into a textured totality. In a sense Oscar Murillo is attempting to redefine a social politics alongside an aesthetics of difference based on the fold of subjective autonomy. In so doing, it mobilises aesthetic memory, social participation, energetics of inscription processes, textures of social life, combined with political and technological critiques, in ways that mobilise a circulation of these elements in free play and symbolic economy. In this way, the accumulation of figuration is coupled with the dis-figuration of abstraction.
If there is a claim for this venture it would be that participation should be linked to intelligence, that absorption can be coupled with social and ethical awareness, and that to have a future the link between doing and becoming requires structures of realisation and transformation. This entails a rethinking of value outside of measurability, and connected to this a politics based upon difference. Not so easy, but possible. Within the present, the secret of a better future lies disguised, and it is not just a matter of finding the key or code for this, but discovering a capacity of recognition within its obscurity.
奧斯卡·穆里略：被淹沒的花園（波浪、褶皺和湧動）
這項創作的初衷是什麼？是對克勞德·莫奈《睡蓮》的一種視覺再現，還是對莫奈因白內障而視力失明或嚴重受損的痛苦表達？該項目將這兩種衝動——破裂與狂喜——結合起來，傳達出一種視覺的過載感，同時伴隨著看不清事物的焦慮感。穆里略稱之為「社會性白內障」。這種繪畫的沈浸式結構，由波浪般的筆觸和類似書法的銘文組成，結合了對批判性結構的探索，成為構建整體裝置的方式。在這種體驗中，視覺被盲目所困擾，既無法表達，也無法用言語表述。這釋放的力量在順暢的連續性和突然的中斷之間不斷交替。這樣，美學與政治之間的互動打開了更多可能性，這些可能性基於重構的自由觀念（自由作為感知的爆發）。在這種情況下，沒有美學上的共同體，就無法構建社會共同體；同樣，沒有社會協調，就不會有美學的創作衝動。因此，這個項目像是一種在相互交流中的律動，而能量是其核心原則。
藝術參與的概念已經催生了一系列有趣的結構，這些結構源於對美學形式主義的反抗。特別是在1964到1966年間，信號畫廊的藝術家們不僅引入了觀眾參與的概念，還將這種參與視為反思社會抵抗和美學差異的工具。這與對新殖民主義的批判緊密相連，並且在追求社會解放的同時，保持了對批判性問題的敏銳感。相比之下，「關係美學」的概念比較模糊，它結合了對視覺景觀的哲學批判和全球化的美學體系。隨著技術美學的發展，贊助機構利用這些美學結構來提升自身的社會合法性。因此，藝術家們需要制定巧妙且複雜的策略，來決定如何以及在哪裡參與這些將愉悅和社會控制結合的企業結構。
在這種背景下，政治不僅僅是公開的言語展示，還包括軟性的勸說、重複、誘惑策略與硬性的壓制機制交織在一起，形成了一個複雜的整體。從這個角度看，奧斯卡·穆里略試圖基於主觀自主，重新定義社會政治與美學差異之間的關係。他通過動員美學記憶、社會參與和社會生活的各種細節與多樣性，並結合政治和技術批判，讓這些元素自由結合，形成象徵性的交流與經濟體系。這種方式結合了具象與抽象的表現，創造出一種新的藝術動態。
如果要對這個創作表達觀點，那就是參與應該與智慧相結合，並且能夠融合社會和道德意識。為了實現未來的目標，我們必須找到一種將「做」和「成為」連接起來的方式。這意味著我們需要重新思考價值觀，超越那些可衡量的標準，並且進一步考慮一種基於差異的政治觀點。這雖然困難重重，但並非不可能。更美好的未來其實隱藏在當前不明確的狀態中，要解鎖這個未來的關鍵，不僅僅是找到解決問題的具體方法或答案，更重要的是我們是否有能力在這種不確定的情況下發現潛在的機會或可能性。
Text by Jonathan Miles
Translated by Tiffany Zhang
