New Collages for Papier 13 in Montreal

You can see this new collages at p|m Gallery's booth at the Papier 13 fair in Montreal opening April 25th.

Please Boss Remember Me

Follow The Winter

May 31 – June 7th, 2012

Opening May 31st 6pm-8pm. Artist in Attendance.

Skew Gallery - 1615 10th Avenue SW, Calgary AB, Canada

Feeling the historical weight of Berlin and the sense of loss it has engendered, his work in Follow the Winter has taken a heavier turn. In this new body of work, Murray continues his exploration of collage construction and the reactionary relationships that supervene the acts of painting and their documentation, and introduces the figure into his practice for the first time. Through old photographs sourced from East Berlin flea markets images of schoolboys and women in Russian folk dress are incorporated into his paintings, additionally complicating the intricate composition built from layers of paint, collage and weaving .

Murray’s life in Berlin has provided the stimulus to explore mediums that until now have only been nodded to in his painting practice. A stimulus that is a resonant contradiction where emotion, place and history intermingle

“Every day on the way to my Berlin studio, I pass a miserable old jail that has the kind of history that makes one feel queasy. A sign hangs out front that reads “Live In A Monument”. They are renovating the jail into condos. The sign is meant for me and the rest of the city’s ex-pats and transplants. The thought of living in this monument would sicken anyone who had lived with the threat of being forced to.

I moved to this city to be with Julia. She was born in East Berlin. To care for her I pay very close attention to what my hands are doing. What marks they leave, what they pick up, how well they can make someone understand something. This means my actions in the studio feel even more harrowing. Or maybe they are now balanced by an equal weight held in something that cannot be inventoried between its walls and my skin.

To love is to feel loss. To love Julia here is to encounter it at the end of every block.
On my tram ride to the studio, I ask myself: How do you maintain a ruin? How do you follow the winter?"

-Wil Murray, Spring 2012, Berlin

BROADCAST April 19th-22nd, at the Funkhaus, Berlin

BROADCAST
Curated by Amir Fattal and Wil Murray

April 19th-22nd, 2012
Funkhaus - Kantine
Nalepastraße 18-50
12459 Berlin

Opening Party: April 19th 19:00-22:00
Duration: 20-22.04.2012 12-17h

Even by Berlin standards the daily journey travelled to the studio by the artists of Broadcast is surreal: from the black tower of Ostkreuz, past the jail-turned-condos with a view of an unused ferris wheel and through the Gilliam-esque Heizkraftwerk, they arrive at the anachronistically guarded gate of The Funkhaus. Inside, every hallway is lit like a De Chirico painting. But behind every door they have carved out their own real space from the institutional/industrial surreal. Using its rooms like hundreds of larynxes, they are broadcasting again from the Funkhaus.
Curators Amir Fattal and Wil Murray combed these voices, and selected 18 artist’s works to exhibit in the complex's former canteen. BROADCAST displays the occasional harmonies made between artists working privately in a sprawling and often mysterious institution.


Daniele Bordoni
Nadja Bournonville
Sabatino Cersosimo
Sabine Klar
Konstantin Kunath
Sibylle Jazra
Liz Little
Julia Ludwig
Wil Murray
Michael Picke
Charlotte Richter
Ulrich Schäfer
Max Schreier
Tor Seidel
Joachim Seinfeld
Kurt Von Bley
Peter Wilde
Jonas Wilisch
Gloria Zein

Image: Kurt Von Bley 'wzorowy uczeń - musterschüler, pt.2'

Interview With Alicia Reuter up on Whitehot

Once a year, I have a writer down for an interview at the studio. This time, my friend and writer Alicia Reuter came down to my Berlin studio to talk about painting, collage, photography...and fires, circuses and teenage goths.

"I’ve started to view the Berlin art scene as similar to broadcast television. If you buy a television and flip on the switch, you have TV."

Enjoy The Article Here

Show is up at Sur La Montagne in Berlin

This is the first time I gone without vinyl lettering and painted the title directly on the wall. I'm pleased. It looks somewhere in between a message written on a barn in a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon and the message scrawled on the wal by the father in Hellraiser 2.

If you are in Berlin, come to the opening on Thursday March 22nd at 7pm. The gallery is located at Torstrasse 170 in Berlin Mitte.

See you there.

Natural Light in The Studio

See it in the flesh, and in photograph next week at Sur La Montagne in Berlin, and in May at Skew Gallery in Calgary.