Oscar Murillo

Oscar Murillo takes on one of art history's most beloved painters and asks what happens when Claude Monet's late work is read against the political tensions of today. The artist, who works across disciplines, builds a large body of work around that question, using mark-making to rethink how we perceive things and how power and place shape what we see.

The centerpiece is surge (social cataracts), a series of big, visually arresting paintings that recall Monet's Grainstacks, Houses of Parliament and Water Lilies. Murillo treats darkness as a space of speculation, offering a fresh reading of impressionism while pointing to the politics of seeing and not seeing.

The book places these canvases beside other Murillo paintings, his long-running Frequencies project made with schoolchildren around the world, and participatory pieces that carry his practice out of the studio and into public life. Together they form a layered meditation on visibility, landscape and the politics of artistic labor, across borders and generations.

The design is modern and energetic, with full-bleed plates, installation photography and images from community-based projects. It documents a major undertaking while reflecting Murillo's socially engaged approach, and gives an immersive look at a practice that is rich in materials and urgent in its ideas.