Dorsch Gallery is pleased to present Martin Murphy’s Modern Trance, an exhibition which will feature new work that pairs the narrative capabilities of sound and moving images with sculptural components, creating spatial and nonlinear stories. In conjunction with the exhibition, Dorsch Gallery wil... Read more
Dorsch Gallery is pleased to present Martin Murphy’s Modern Trance, an exhibition which will feature new work that pairs the narrative capabilities of sound and moving images with sculptural components, creating spatial and nonlinear stories. In conjunction with the exhibition, Dorsch Gallery will publish a brochure featuring an interview with the artist by Carlos Rigau. The opening reception is Saturday, November 19, 2011, 6-9pm. The exhibition will be on view through January 28, 2012.
Murphy plays with narrative packaging as a material to be worked, like stone or paint. In LA Dreamer (2011) Murphy projects a churning pool of appropriated footage from commercials and other popular media onto a bottle of Diet Coke. The barrage of signifiers overwhelms the viewers; the structure of presentation inverts the market-driven function of the appropriated material. Murphy states, “It’s like using popular media to investigate the process of its own attraction. I also think the structural setups put the new work in a different place; they’re projected on freestanding screens, which establish spatial relationships between the videos and sculptures, and together they may read as a sequential statement or timeline.”
Many of the works in the exhibition use spatial elements to push the boundaries of video or temporal effects to challenge the usual parameters of sculpture. For LA Dreamer Murphy projects the moving image onto a small hand-made screen from behind. The screen is set on the floor in space, like a sculpture. Similarly, for Still Life (deep freeze), blue light and a layer of snow-like ice suggest the passage of time, at once still because it is frozen and frozen (cold) because it is still. The blue light is a cinematic effect that heightens the impression of time passing – narrative.
Martin Murphy received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, and his MFA from Hunter College. His work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as the Garage Projects (Venice, Italy), The Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia, PA), the de La Cruz Collection (Miami, FL), Steinek Gallery (Vienna), Art In General (New York, NY), “The Last Day of Magic” at the 53rd Venice Biennial (Detournement, Venice, Italy), and the HBC Center (Berlin, Germany). His solo exhibition Don’t Forget to Crash was at Dorsch Gallery in March 2010. His work has been reviewed and featured in L’Uomo Vogue, Flash Art and Art & Film: Curated By Vienna | Moderne Kunst Nürnberg. Dorsch Gallery has represented his work since 2008. Martin Murphy lives and works in New York, NY.
The brochure featuring an interview with the artist by Carlos Rigau is available online at dorschgallery.com, on the Modern Trance exhibition page.
