Wil Murray
dal 20/11/2008 al 15/12/2008
Segnalato da
20/11/2008
Wil Murray
Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa
Why Im not a painter. The joyful exuberance of Murray's color palette stops viewers in their tracks, insisting they take notice. The layers of paint are legion, cut away in certain sections and reapplied elsewhere, creating a composition that seems cacophonous upon first look.
The joyful exuberance of Mr. Murray’s Pop art-influenced color palette stops
viewers in their tracks, insisting they take notice. The layers of paint are legion,
painstakingly poured on to the support, cut away in certain sections and
reapplied elsewhere, creating a composition that seems cacophonous upon first
look. The glossy finish of the paint intensifies this seeming chaos, causing the
eyes to search for a stable point of reference. After the initial shock has passed,
the complexity of the work, the ways in which it is simultaneously familiar and
peculiar, begins to register.
His generous and complex works take their place within the resurgence of
painting as a medium of relevance in contemporary art. Mr. Murray, however,
pursues a non-representational practice that catechizes the history of modern
painting in a playful manner, picking up dropped threads and taking them in new
and daring directions. The manner in which he builds up specific areas of the
surface while excavating others represents a daring embrace of, and challenge
to, the two-dimensional nature of the support, creating a sculptural quality without
producing illusionistic depth.
Connected to formal technique is how Mr. Murray’s
work takes up the issue of narrative: the story that each painting tells us of its
own creation. But the work evades an easy narrative of progression—the tale is
not straightforward, not easily told—as the end of one painting is removed and
placed in the middle of another, the beginning and subsequent layers of paint is
visible in spots and concealed elsewhere. His work is demanding in that it makes
strange and new what was once familiar, dressing up dissonance in its sublime
Sunday best.
Opening next at PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY...BEAUTY AND THE GROTESQUE, a
new exhibition by installation artist DEBORAH MARGO, from January 7 to
February 3, 2009.
Artist Reception: Friday, November 21, 2008 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.
PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY
2401 Bank Street Ottawa Canada K1V 8R9