Oscar Murillo Transforms DAS MINSK into a Living Experiment with Collective Osmosis

A museum becomes something far more dynamic this spring in Potsdam, as Oscar Murillo takes over DAS MINSK Kunsthaus with Collective Osmosis, an exhibition that pushes painting beyond the canvas and into shared experience.

On view until 9 August 2026, the project reimagines the role of the museum itself. Rather than a static environment, DAS MINSK is activated as a space of exchange, participation and dialogue, where visitors are not just observers but contributors within a constantly evolving artistic process.

At the core of Collective Osmosis is a conversation across time. Murillo places his own abstract works in direct dialogue with paintings by Claude Monet, drawing on the Impressionist’s late-life shift in perception following deteriorating eyesight. For Murillo, Monet’s changing visual language becomes a way of examining how perception shapes understanding, and how limitations can open up entirely new ways of seeing.

This idea extends throughout the exhibition, where visibility and obscurity are treated not as opposites, but as conditions that shape social and political realities. Murillo uses darkness, distortion and abstraction as tools to question what is seen, what is overlooked and how meaning is constructed across different contexts.

The concept of “osmosis” becomes both metaphor and method. Borrowed from science, the term describes movement and balance across boundaries. Here, it reflects Murillo’s broader vision of permeability between people, places and ideas. The exhibition dissolves traditional divides between artist and audience, museum and city, local and global, creating a fluid environment where interaction becomes central.

Participation sits at the heart of the project. Murillo’s long-running Frequencies series, which gathers marks made by schoolchildren across the world, appears alongside new works and installations. These collective gestures form a visual language that speaks to shared experience across geographies, positioning mark-making as a universal act of expression.

Visitors are also invited into the process through live, evolving works. Through initiatives such as Social Mapping and Collective Painting, audiences contribute directly to large-scale canvases, layering their own marks into an ongoing narrative. These works extend beyond the gallery walls, with contributions arriving from across Germany as part of a nationwide project that unfolds throughout the exhibition’s run.

The dialogue expands further through Murillo’s collaboration with the Museum Barberini, where new works are presented alongside Impressionist masterpieces. This dual presentation reinforces the exhibition’s central theme: that painting is not fixed, but continually redefined through context, perception and interaction.

Across Collective Osmosis, Murillo positions art as a form of communication rather than a finished object. Every gesture, whether made by the artist or a visitor, becomes part of a larger system of exchange. The result is an exhibition that challenges traditional structures while opening up new possibilities for how art is experienced.

In Potsdam, the museum is no longer simply a place to look at art. It becomes a space where ideas move, collide and evolve in real time.