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.
“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.
Doctor, Doctor Every Night I Dream Your Investigation My Notion
The Rover Art Fair starts tonight and goes all weekend.
I am very pleased to announce I will be represented by p|m Gallery in Toronto, Canada.
2 paintings disassembled and crated up to go to my upcoming show "Askew" in Milwaukee at the Union Art Gallery - University of Wisconsin.
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.
Last Summer I Will Build A 1:8 Scale Model Of Your Vagina"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
Rife with meaning, Murray's conceptually laden, abstract sculptural paintings literally jump from the wall, providing a rich visual experience unfettered by the traditional, straight-ahead viewing angle. His works are assemblages of paint skins, photographs and three-dimensional constructs that fluctuate between being wildly excessive and subtly seductive.
I Hate Your Language, You Hate Your Language
Wil Murray
February 10th - March 12, 2011
Opening reception Feb. 10th : 6pm - 8pm (Artist In Attendance)
Skew Gallery: 1615 10th Avenue S.W. Calgary, AB Canada 001 403 244 4445
"You're looking at striated surfaces, drawn surfaces, old paint skins that have been peeled off, folded over on themselves, turned into a kind of sculptural element. It's a new kind of management of painted surfaces that are certainly a kind of Punk version of the bourgeois paintings" - Richard Rhodes, editor of Canadian Art describing Wil Murray's paintings on Bravo! Arts&Minds.
Skew Gallery is pleased to announce the return of Calgary's "hometown boy" Wil Murray to present a solo exhibition of his abstract sculptural paintings. Now based in Berlin Germany, Murray's interest in the radial view of his paintings propels the artist to create a cornucopia of layers in each painting, where paint itself serves as the subject of narrative. Murray assembles his paintings using acrylic paint-skins, brushwork, foam injections, and wooden appendages in an assortment of patterns and textures and forms. The resulting paintings are simultaneously garish in their excess, yet equally seductive in their unbridled vigor and skillful delivery; they are visceral both in the creation and the viewing.
See works from the exhibition here.
Photo: Maxime Ballesteros
December 2, 2010 – January 29, 2011
Holiday Reception: Saturday, December 11, 1 – 4 pm
We welcome you to join us for a cup of mulled wine and festive treats.
DIANE FARRIS GALLERY - VANCOUVER
Diane Farris Gallery celebrates the last weeks of 2010 with Review/Preview, a group exhibit highlighting artwork from our favourite moments of the past year and providing a glimpse of what 2011 will bring.
2010 was a colourful year at Diane Farris Gallery. In Sara Genn’s first solo show with the gallery, she explored white as a starting point for a gradual shift to colour. Review/Preview includes Genn’s recent vibrant works that further demonstrate her mastery of colour and texture. In June it was All About Blue, a group exhibition showcasing artworks where the colour blue dominated, represented here by Angela Grossmann’s drawings.
It was also a year of firsts. Not only did Diane Farris Gallery launch its blog, it held its first juried show, Twitter/Art+Social Media. Through this exhibition, which included over 40 artists from across Canada and abroad, the gallery examined how social media is affecting the practice of artists. Review/Preview includes works by gallery artists Fiona Ackerman and Wil Murray who both actively use social media and were also featured in our September show Pushing the Edge.
Amy Alice Thompson’s collages on vintage library cards and Justin Ogilvie’s Velazquez-inspired mixed media painting represent the work of two guestartists. As the gallery handles an increasing number of artworks from the secondary market, a spectacular painting by David Bierk and an Andy Warhol print of Mick Jagger will be featured.
New works by Shannon Belkin and Nick Lepard take animals as their subjects. Belkin’s paintings are reminiscent of romantic historical dog portraits while Lepard’s charcoal renderings of elephants confirm his mastery of the medium in these playful drawings.
Paintings from Gary Cody and Elzbieta Krawecka’s upcoming solo shows provide a preview of the exciting exhibits the gallery will offer in the new year. In Cody’s new paintings, he moves from still life compositions towards a greater degree of abstraction while retaining the photorealist style for which he is known. Krawecka’s new series of landscapes, Coming Home, brings together views of the West Coast and Ontario.
We welcome you to join us on Saturday, December 11th afternoon for a cup of mulled wine and festive treats.
*Please note: Diane Farris Gallery will close for the Christmas holidays.
Closed December. 24, 2010 to January 4, 2011.
Diane Farris Gallery, 1590 West 7th Avenue, Vancouver
Contact: Stacey White art@dianefarrisgallery.com
Tel: (604) 737-2629 Fax: (604) 737-2675
This exhibition can be viewed on-line at: www.dianefarrisgallery.com
Image: Wil Murray: My Vagina Has A First Name It's -N-, 2010. Acrylic on Photo. 6" X 8"
