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.

Barren

In the corner of the studio.

Doctor, Doctor Every Night I Dream Your Investigation My Notion

About the show in Berlin: I'm showing paintings as usual, and some multiple exposure photos taken in the subway and in my studio, and some weavings and some collages. Painting, taken on its own hasn't made sense for a while. There's a deep sense of loss in that and in all of my work these days. Call it weight. Of history here, of age....of the history of looking at everything a few degrees from center that has led me out the backdoor and into the street.

Here's the exhibition text I wrote:

“I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting, and theme” – John Hawkes

I make two things at once: a painting that leaves through the studio door, and another that travels down wires and through the air. To never meet again. They participate in completely different narratives, torn apart and raised up by proud nails, drunken revelers, and teenaged bloggers.

The camera and the loom were always part of the act. They were just off stage until now. I erased the syllables of can-vas by weaving and the sound of re-pro-duc-tion by exposing film. Neither need be spoken anymore… the awful quotation marks around the word “painter” took care of that.

I have been called the Hooters of painting. I always thought I was the Brad Dourif. Potato potato.

In this show you’ll get it all.

Doktor, Doktor: Solo show in Berlin

Doctor, Doctor Every Night I Dream Your Investigation My Notion

Solo exhibition of painting, collage, weaving and photography by Wil Murray

March 18th to 25th

Vernissage March 22nd, 19h

Sur La Montagne Gallery

Torstraße 170, Berlin

Tape Modern No. 25 in Berlin

Come see my newest work next week:

Opening: Friday, 13th of January 7pm-2am
Address: Heidestrasse 14, 10557 Berlin.
Free entry all night!

with:

Ron Abram
Leo Babsky
Maurice Baker
Marion Bataillard
Geeske Bijker
Jesse Dyer
Malte Hagen Olbertz
Arran Hearn
Thomas Heidtmann
Andreas Helfer
Otto Hernandez
Dirk Holzberg
Ieva Jansone
Filippos Kavakas
Henry Kleine
Pessi Margulies
Dennis Meier
Carola Mücke
Wil Murray
Sharon Paz
Matthias Schade
Marc Schamuthe
Johanna Silbermann
SPAR*K
Willi Tomes
Masaki Umetsu
Elmar Vestner
Lee Wagstaff
Sadie Weis

*Free entry all night!
*Image by LEE WAGSTAFF
*Tape Modern is organize by Amir Fattal and Jonathan Margulies
* Exhibition Assistant: Rita Guerreiro

Russian Girls, maybe pages collages

A series of collages I made last sumer on arcademi, see more of the series here.

made from a book on traditional Russian folk dress(a common sort of photo book leftover from the days pf the DDR), and draped drop sheets I photographed covering my paintings.

On it's way to Milwaukee

2 paintings disassembled and crated up to go to my upcoming show "Askew" in Milwaukee at the Union Art Gallery - University of Wisconsin.

After some major problems with the American shipping company in brown shorts, I found a great guy in Berlin to work with. Email me if you need someone.

Joe came by yesterday

Joe Dilworth came by yesterday to shoot my work and took some casual portraits too. My studio never looked so good.

Art dies in the summer, but look at this new painting

Atelier Project Exhibition: June 30th in Berlin

The Atelier Project Exhibition in the cavernous former cafeteria of the DDR radio complex will feature works by 8 international artists chosen in 2010 for the pilot visual arts project at the Funkhaus. This exhibition will be the first of a series of self-curated exhibitions by the artists working in a block of studios occupying warehouses and listening rooms on the first floor.
A haunting, empty space lit by the sun that served breakfast, lunch and dinner for decades, the former cafeteria is a location that represents well the ironic stillness and quiet the artists experience creating their pieces in the former workplace of thousands broadcasting to millions.

-Carla Busuttil (ZA) -Steffen Geisler (D) -Sibylle Jazra (D) -Alexander J. Kraut (D) -Eleni M (CY) -Wil Murray (CA) -Andrea Romero (MX) -Martin Werthmann (D) The exhibition is part of a larger opening event that includes: The Funkhaus Art Prize 2011 exhibition The Funkhaus Atelier Program exhibition The open Studios of the Funkhaus Ateliers Opening: 30 of June 18h-23h Duration: 1-2 July 12h-17h The opening will follow by an outdoor party on the bank of the spree and a BBQ!

Callin' From The Funkhaus

June 30th to July 3rd....Big event at the Funkhaus Nalepastrasse, where I have my studio in Berlin. They will be announcing the winner of the Funkhaus sculpture prize, having open studios, a curated exhibition of guest artists and an exhibition of the artists(including me) in the Atelier Project. Food, booze, DJs....beautiful river and Stalinist architecture.

I'll be showing some new paintings.

The party is on Thursday, June 3oth, at 6pm to 10pm.

St. Laurent vs. Berlin Wall

Marianne Ackerman was in town a few weeks ago and we did a little interview at Neu! Bar.

Read the resulting article here.

This article reflects back to me that I am not coming back to Montreal any time soon. I live here now, making psychedelic vaginas.

No dicks, no shit, no eggs…

When the interviewer says ".....No dicks, no shit, no eggs…", you know it's going to be a good one.

My interview with Elvia Pyburn-Wilk for Berlin Art link can be found here.

Photo by Mike Milosh

Last Summer I Will Build A 1:8 Scale Model Of Your Vagina @ Staatsgalerie Prenzlauer Berg

My first exhibition in Berlin:
Last Summer I Will Build A 1:8 Scale Model Of Your Vagina

Wil Murray

April 25th to April 29th, 2011

Staatsgalerie Prenzlauer Berg

Berlin

Vernissage: April 25th, 8pm.

"Take great inspiration from Kurt Kren’s 31/75 Asylum and from Val Del Omar’s Fuego in Castilla.

Move to look at paintings hanging on walls, but also sit still to watch them slide across screens.

Enjoy a practice of making still, dimensional, constructed objects that will be inevitably flattened and put in motion. I refuse the ironic practices of making paintings for looking alone while they will still be photographed, broadcasted and watched. I refuse making paintings for watching alone while they will still have existed materially and looked at hanging on a wall. I can only make for both. I welcome the conceptual mess of making for watching and looking, welcome the confusion of a painting and it’s representation.

Pay as close attention in my practice to viewing source, angle, distance and duration as I do in my performance as an artist to volume, shine, cut and colour. So that my work in photograph is made impossible when standing in front of it looking and so that my work in person is made impossible when watching it from across the world."

Photo: Maxime Ballesteros

Help out The Blue Angel Lounge get to America

There's not many bands I have seen play more than once in Berlin. The again, there's not many bands I would want to see more than once...but that's another post.

I've seen the Blue Angel Lounge three times.

They need to get to America to spread a little love in the new world and play some psych at the Austin psych festival. A great album produced by Anton Newcombe might get people's attention, but cold hard cash is needed to buy their steady tour diet of spray cheese and creme de menthe.

Help them out by pledging on Kickstarter and you'll get a little present from 8mm Musik too....

If You Lived Free Or Died Here You Would Be Home Or Dead By Now

If You Lived Free Or Died Here You Would Be Home Or Dead By Now, 2010

Acrylic, Photographs and Polyethylene Foam on Board

80" X 80" X 18"

Photo: Joe Dilworth