Michael Borremans

Michael Borremans, The Marvel, 2001

Belgian artist Michael Borremans has created a renowned body of work, acclaimed both for its mastery of the mediums of drawing and painting—and 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 past—though there are hints of the 1940s—Borremans creates an austere and oppressive world where things become more and more disturbing the deeper you look.

His second solo show at New York’s 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.

Here's a very interesting interview with the artist himself:
www.artinfo.com/news/story/13454/michael-borremans/