Established artist: Christopher Murphy at Lora Schlesinger, Santa Monica

Christopher Murphy, Idle
@LORA SCHLESINGER GALLERY
through November 25th, 2017

 

Christopher Murphy, a new way to deal with representation in painting

 

No doubts Christopher deserves to be part of our “Established artist” selection. His paintings combine a classic hyper realism with – his recent paintings- a discreet but serious touch of craziness that you can find like you’re playing “Where’s Wally?”(see “Badlands” above)

Contemporary /Classic representation in painting? These ideas are in complete opposition. Only a few painters are able to face the issue with such bravery: how to deal with the traditional representation or hyper realism, without being just a painter from the past? It’s not easy.

Mark Tansey would be the first artist in the USA to deal with such fundamental painting issue, and it sounds that Christopher Murphy is on his tracks to do so . At their time, Manet, Cezanne dealt with the same kind of problematic, then came the powerful American abstraction.

Lately in America we were at a point were nice “plein air” paintings were realized in parallel with Hyper realism as well as with a contemporary art made of concepts and abstractions.

Hyper realism has always found difficulties to be fully present in the contemporary art market because of its very nature of being a hyper realistic representation that offers a precise image which means no room to think further compared to abstract which is in its essence the freedom and compared to the concept which is a proposition to think.

From exhibition to exhibition, we see that Christopher Murphy knows there’s a room to play with in the representation of Nature and people. That new one at Lora Schlesinger, is a revelation.

Nowadays here we are, a new kind of hyper realistic representation is coming with Christopher Murphy.

In many of those new paintings from 2017 shown at Lora Schlesinger, Murphy is practicing a cold photographic painting, with the ambition to show no more ambition than to paint what he sees. In Murphy’s paintings, no “impression”, no feeling shown with a special brushstroke or different color than the one he sees.

Murphy shows a strong interest in classic/efficient compositions like the one below, a masterpiece of perspective. He has also successfully attempted  to implement to his cold photographic representation an incongruous element that would disrupt the whole subject, like below. It changes the lecture of the painting into multiple directions. Excellent.

 

 

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Born in 1977 in Irvine, CA

Education

2002   B.F.A., Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA

Solo Exhibitions

2017    Idle, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2013    Strum and Drang, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2011    Forget That You Were Young, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2008    The Dawn of Luxury, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2005    Matter in the Wrong Place, Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA
2003    Only A Reed, Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA
2002    Creative Artist Agency, Beverly Hills, CA

Selected Group Exhibitions

2014   Group Show, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2011   Gallery Artists Group Show, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2010    small works, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Faces, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2009   The Toy Show IILora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Draw the Line, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2006   Undertow, Metalstone Gallery, New York, NY
2003   Image & Enigma, Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA
2002   Paintings, Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA
Figure This II, Fine Art Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles, CA
Group Show, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
2001   Group Show, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA

Bibliography

2013   Christopher Murphy, New American Paintings #103, Vol. 17, No. 6,December/January 2013: pg. 98-101
2011   Zellon, Jody. ‘Christopher Murphy at Lora Schelsinger Gallery, Art Scene Vol. 31, No. 1, September
2008  Ollman, Leah. ‘His Paintings Capture Change,’ Los Angeles Times, September 19
2006   Zellon, Jody. ‘Christopher Murphy at Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, Art Papers, March/April
2004   Frank, Peter. ‘Image & Enigma at Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, Artweek,  February
2003
Blizzard, Peggy. Artist has successful first solo professional show, Irvine World News, August 21
Knight, Christopher. Emergence from the void, Los Angeles Times, July 25