27/03/2026
Currently on view at in Brussels.
Cuban-born painter William Osorio (b. 1989) draws on his experience of exile, having left Cuba for the United States at the age of eighteen, to shape a deeply personal figurative practice grounded in memory, identity, and movement.
Based on photographs of seemingly ordinary moments, the works aim to poeticize what usually slips past our fleeting perception: gestures, pauses, fragments of everyday life that make up the silent texture of our daily existence.
Osorio brings together intimate portrayals of himself and those close to him with art-historical and literary resonances. The works on paper were produced during a residency at MASS MoCA in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, while the rug work was created in Miami. Together, they reflect on contemplation and the search for meaning and beauty in everyday life.
The title Plain and Height alludes both to the elevation of the ordinary into poetic language and to the distinct geographies in which the works were made. In the work Contemplation IV, a self-image of the artist, reading is projected as a reclaimed leisure and as a creative act, as it was thought at the time of the ancient Greeks.
The works alone are about looking inward, the contemplative life and its potential for creativity and real change in the world.
Air of the Berkshires I, 2024
Oil stick and textile on paper
38 X 28 cm / 50 x 40 cm (framed)
