Michaël Borremans combines the painting techniques of the Old Masters with existential questions about the human condition, producing enigmatic tableaux that are at once moving, unsettling, and thought-provoking. The works from the series Fire from the Sun (2017) on view here raise fundamental questions: are human beings inherently good or evil? Are children angelic, pure, and innocent? Or is evil—the aggressive instinct directed against one’s fellow humans—part of human nature? The paintings explicitly stage timeless and placeless (primordial) scenes—evident in the draped curtains and minimal settings—revealing the origin and the abyss of the human condition. The gift of fire, symbolizing the beginning of civilization, is here inseparably linked to violence. Or is it all, perhaps, just a game? The series’ enigmatic nature—or openness to interpretation—prompts associations with other mythologically charged figurations of (de)civilization: the children in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, who descend into fascistic ritual and repression on a deserted island (and for whom the fire provided by the sun is also key); or the colonial era depictions of cannibalism in sixteenth-century travelogues, such as those by Hans Staden; or the nexus of violence and tool use in the opening ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unlike these portrayals, however, Borremans resists any fixed interpretation. His scenes do not coalesce into myth, but remain fragments: flickering visual memories whose disturbing power lies precisely in their incompleteness.

WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION: Fire from the Sun (2017), Oil on cardboard, 28.2 × 34.2 cm, framed: 46.9 × 52.6 × 4 cm Oil on wood panel, 22.7 × 27.1 cm, framed: 41.5 × 45.5 × 2 cm Oil on wood panel, 21.9 × 30.8 cm, framed: 40.5 × 49.3 × 2 cm. Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner