Upcoming Solo Exhibition: "The Strange Space That Will Keep Us Together" Vancouver, BC

the strange space that will keep us together

Wil Murray

8 March to 6 April 2008

Opening reception Friday March 7, 8 to 10 pm

the strange space that will keep us together is a survey exhibition of emerging, Montreal-based painter Wil Murray. The exhibition consists of a selection of works made after the July 2003 destruction by fire of his West Pender Street studio space, the historic Pender Auditorium, to the present day. In his work, Murray picks up the dropped threads of abstract modern painting, playfully subverting its dogma, while seriously re-engaging its central themes.

Murray’s work explores the horrors of banal choices. In every choice, there is an element of madness. The most reasoned decision is still a leap of faith into an unknowable future- a leap which is never made alone, as its consequences ripple out. Paint is poured onto a support, slowly built up layer by layer, sections are cut out and tacked onto other works. Marks are made and effaced, at some points visible, at others concealed. A story is told, but the tale is not straightforward. Against mastery, against autonomy, Murray’s process is suggestive of the tension between the terror of the contingency of identity and the spaces caused by incommensurable differences.

Wil Murray was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. He attended the Alberta College of Art + Design for two years before moving to Vancouver to open a studio. Murray was short-listed for the RBC Painting Competition (2005) and was included in the Magenta Foundation’s Carte Blanche Vol. 2: Painting (2007). Represented by the Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Murray’s work is included in collections in Canada and the United States.

This exhibition is curated by Jacqueline Mabey, a candidate to the Masters Degree in Critical and Curatorial Studies at The University of British Columbia.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Alvin Balkind Fund for Student Curatorial Initiatives, the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory, and the Faculty of Arts at The University of British Columbia, STRESSLIMITDESIGN, the Program in Canadian Studies at The University of British Columbia, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Lotus Hotel Limited, and the UBC Alma Mater Society.

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For further information please contact: Julie Bevan at julie.bevan@ubc.ca,
tel: (604) 822-3640, or fax: (604) 822-6689

Belkin Satellite Gallery Website

please use my full name so we can start a public feud

From the short story "Jaws" by Donald Barthelme:
"I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are - an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew. When Natasha bites William she's saying only part of what she wants to say to him. She's saying, William! Wake up! Remember! But that gets lost in a haze of pain, his."

(from "40 Stories" pg. 66)

New Painting: Super Special Chat Twenty Dollars

Super Special Chat Twenty Dollars, 34" X 47" Acrylic & Foam on Board

Back in Calgary, on my Mother's couch watching cable, I was struck by some familiar strangeness in a Looney Tunes cartoon.
It was the one with Foghorn Leghorn and the Dog and the impossibly hungry weasel(possibly my favourite cartoon character). The dog has convinced the weasel that he should not chase the little chicks, but rather go after bigger game, in the form of Foghorn Leghorn. In the midst of all of this, the dog occasionally pauses to deliver a few lines directly to the viewer.
I would say "directly to the camera", but this being an animated cartoon, the camera is non-existent.
This means an animator decided to have a dog he was animating speak as if he were pausing from some scripted scenario to deliver a few lines to a non-existent camera.
I find a corollary in what the animator is doing, by having the dog speak to an imaginary camera, to what I am doing in the studio lately. Applying paint skins, draped and folded, coming far off the board and towards the viewer, mimics the dog's pause and delivery. While both the application of paint directly to the painting - poured or applied with brush to render illusionistic form - and the attachment of paint skins are both from my hand, the former adheres very strongly to an official narrative, and the latter to some subtext or supertext(?) that feels a bit like Rauschenberg adding a bucket and other items to an otherwise typically painted painting, but even more like that Looney Tunes dog.
The attached paint skins are the dog turning from the action, to deliver the very necessary joke possible only in an aside by a character drawn and imagined in the same incubator as the rest of the narrative.

No Album More Calgary

Lots to tell once I am home from Calgary.
News, opening night photos, and much more.
In the meantime, just listening to Walker Brothers - Nite Flights and checking out the page for my Vancouver solo show in March at the Belkin Satellite.

"The Brawl of The Beast" at The Bilton Centre For Contemporary Art

I have a solo exhibition going up in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada next week:
The Brawl of The Beast
Solo Exhibition of Paintings by Wil Murray

January 5th - February 2nd, 2008

The Bilton Centre For Contemporary Art
4B, 5809 - 51 Ave
Red Deer, AB
T4N 4H8

403.343.3933

Opening Reception and Artist Talk:
7pm, January 11th


I arrive in Calgary on Monday the 7th and am there until the 19th. If you would like to arrange a meeting, please email me.
My hair is a bit shorter these days.