trade today

Oscar Murillo makes work about place and movement.  Here, industry and economic conditions stand in for social rules and immigration regulations. Murillo draws connections between the art market and today’s borderless economies that operate around the world. Each element in Murillo’s trade today appears to have been made by different hands, as if the set of paintings was composed in multiple stages and locations through various modes. This process recalls that of many products created in current manufacturing systems. Each piece represents a distinct impulse with an analog in the globalized marketplace. Checkerboard patterns and the Hong Kong currency reference the uniformity of money despite its myriad forms; the colorful expressionistic marks hint at a vernacular that is struggling for a place among powerful economic forces; and the steel hanging bars display a durable strength that undergirds all industrial production methods.