Michaël Borremans: Automat

Michaël Borremans frequently exhibits his paintings and films together, drawing out painterly qualities from film and cinematic qualities from paint to elucidate moody scenarios of "automated" behavior--scenarios in which the actions and poses of individual people or groups seem to be trapped in a loop of melancholia and unspecified woe, or what one critic has called a "Theatre of the Absurd," evoking not so much the theatrical movement of the same name as the sense of both stagedness and absurdity in Borremans' images. These qualities have already been explored in earlier Borremans films, such as The Feeding, The Storm and Taking Turns. Automat--a perfect title for conveying the artist's preoccupations--presents Borremans' most recent works in film, drawing and paint.