JUDITH MURRAY T E M P E S T
JUDITH MURRAY T E M P E S T SU N DAR AM TAGOR E CH E LSEA SE PTE M B E R 6 – OCTOB E R 6, 2018
GALLERY MISSION Established in 2000, Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. We focus on developing exhibitions and hosting not-for-profit events that encourage spiritual, social and aesthetic dialogues. In a world where communication is instant and cultures are colliding and melding as never before, our goal is to provide venues for art that transcend boundaries of all sorts. With alliances across the globe, our interest in cross-cultural exchange extends beyond the visual arts into many other disciplines, including poetry, literature, performance art, film and music.
E N D L E S S L Y
L I L LY W E I
It’s the smell of paint that gets you, that gets to you as you walk into Judith Murray’s West Broadway studio. For some, its heady bouquet is more bewitching than the most alluring perfume. It is also tells you that you are in a painter’s studio, a familiar odor that embodies the long history of painting. It might also remind us that painting, as a medium and practice, is flourishing, in great demand again and has been for some time. Murray’s studio (and loft) is one of those spaces that excite a case of severe square-footage envy—the reward for homesteading in SoHo in the gritty days of its mythic, pre-gentrified youth. At the moment, it is filled with an abundance of paintings and works on paper in sizes varying from small to extra-large, most from the past couple of years. Hung up, stacked against walls, laid out on tables, many are about to be sent off to her gallery’s Chelsea space for her upcoming show in September. Murray, in the early 1970s, as a neophyte artist, vowed to work with only four colors—red, yellow, black and white—a vow she has kept up to the present, presciently knowing even then that this foursome would be more than enough to occupy her for the past five decades. That they are only
Left: Conveyor (detail), 2018, oil on linen, 36 x 40 inches/91.5 x 101.6 cm 7
Judith Murray, 1977
Above and right: Judith Murray and her SoHo studio, 2018
four colors, however, might not be immediately apparent in looking at these works, as the later ventures diverged from the original paintings: bold, hard-edged, idiosyncratic shapes verging on the surreal that were clearly painted in red, yellow, black and white. The later canvases became more modulated, all over, the colors mixed, dependent on mark-making, on brushwork for their imagery and energy. Murray is a colorist that in wizardly fashion multiplies her quartet into countless permutations that clash and also harmonize, reveling in the variety that even one color has. From this curtailed palette, she has coaxed out an infinite range of tonalities in an ongoing and singular investigation of color and materiality as she searches for the unique identity of each painting, demonstrating time and again that her limits are no limits at all. If she wants a shade that approximates green to cool down an area or balance it, she will apply yellow over black. Reds go violet with the addition 8
of black, including a plummy, often translucent purple that appears in many of the works, summoning up a color once strictly reserved for royalty. She adroitly alters the paint’s qualities as well, from matte to glowing, from opaque to sheer, the brushwork fat, thin, silken, coarse, short, staccato, or drawn out in a slow glissando. Sometimes the paint lies on the surface like thick curls of buttery icing, as in Polar (2014), the title belying its lusciousness (although, as an abstract image, it could be snow, and much more). Either way, it begs you to dip your finger into it, then lick. Some approach bas-relief status; Murray also revels in paint’s materiality, tactility, voluptuousness. To this restricted lexicon, she added a bar or a band that extends vertically from top to bottom in each painting, another hallmark that has defined her work almost from the beginning. It fixes the surface, acting as a more emphatic boundary, an additional commentary about the painting, in 9
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dialogue with it, an appendix of the specific impulses that make up this particular painting. It draws attention away from the edge to the zone near the edge, making it less certain where the painting ends, re-framing the composition—and slows down the gaze, persuading the viewer’s gaze to linger. Many of the paintings are also off-square, but appear square, she pointed out, because of the bar. The slight disruption between what might read as a square and its actuality as off-square is a visual misperception that might cause an optical stumble of sorts. That in turn might cause a certain heightening of impact, of tension as the eye (similar to what the body does to regain balance) re-adjusts, the mind re-processes. Drawing that line that will become the band, she says, has always been a way to begin a conversation with a new work, since she starts with nothing. There is no premeditated image, just a brush, a process. The line that she draws in the beginning, however, doesn’t necessary remain in place. Nor does anything else as the work progresses; everything is contingent, subject to change until she senses it is ready. Once the line is drawn, she begins her underpainting. She uses acrylic for this because it dries quickly and she can make continuous alterations as she goes. The color is raw, bared, exposed, but that changes when she switches to oil, painting over the acrylic, making what will eventually be the final painting, its ultimate layering a translucent glaze. She explains some of what she does, which sounds like a performance, with palette knives scraping, brushes whooshing back and forth, rags and fingers blending, rubbing, whatever is at hand at the moment, whatever occurs to her—which is plenty. She mixes on a palette, on the canvas—it’s the repertoire that in a skilled painter’s hand produces pure magic. 11
These new canvases, the tenor of which varying from somber to the exuberant, with many a combination of the two, are some of the best she has made, brimming with marks, slashes, strokes, each application of paint compelling the next one. The result is a teetering, intoxicated, allover weave of paint strokes, supercharged with compressed energy, as in Tempest (2018), with its breathtaking whirl of paint strokes; Quarry (2017); Threshold (2018)—actually, all of the works. Part of the new appeal is the increasing physicality of the brushwork that gets better and better at capturing the light that crosses its path. Raised from the surface as if embossed, they create a kind of luminosity trap, abetted by the beautiful use of gold and silver (a variant of yellow and white) that makes the paintings glow with an added sheen. Painting is also a form of memoir and is not made in a vacuum. Murray’s colors and compositions are inspired by paintings and places she has encountered all over the world and from many different cultures. But perhaps it is India, a place she fell in love with as a young woman and to which she returns regularly, that is the perennial source for much of her aesthetic as distilled into the sumptuous little red-gold Royal (2018), as only one example. The Florida Keys, where she has a second studio, as parsed in the sun-blasted Trance (2015–2018), is another place she feels a profound connection to and where, in addition to New York, she spends much of her time. Yellow dominates several of the recent paintings such as Infusion (2017) and Currents (2017), as does white, gold and silver, upping the opulence factor, animating the painting further, but subtly, as a glimmer, an intimation, not a klieg light. The tour de force of the exhibition, in my mind, is the 12
diptych Panorama (2014), measuring 72 by 151 inches total. Mostly yellow, banded by a silvery edge (sunlight edged by moonlight?), it is a triumph of radiance, joyousness, its countless strokes of paint fluttering, caressed by light, as if it contained within itself all the mornings of the world, night in abeyance, a hopefulness we have great need of in these uncertain days. Murray is not a political artist but is sensitive, reactive, as all artists are, to the tenor of the times. Murray has also made a sequence of smaller works on linen that is more ethereal, translucent, intimate, succinct, cousins of the paintings. There is Transit (2018), with its lavender diagonal and ghostly verticals; Stride (2017), characterized by its potent horizontal markings, a pretty pink breaking through its more serious colors like runners in a race about to reach the finish line; Slide (2017) and Surge (2018), both looking to me as if they have something to do with tides and water, or exhalations and inhalations, as well as, of course, simply being colors, brushwork. But all these titles, ultimately, are indicative of these works’ buoyancy, their sense of nimble movement and in contrast, their evanescence. We are in the vast country of process, paint, abstraction, to be further explored, refined, further refined, all resolutions inconclusive, since the language of paint—and art—is inexhaustible, as Murray well knows, as these gorgeous works are evidence of. Lilly Wei is a New York-based art critic, independent curator and journalist whose interest is global contemporary art.
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Threshold 2018, oil on linen 50 x 54 inches/127 x 137.2 cm 14
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Junction 2018, oil and metallic oil paint on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 16
Royal 2018, oil and metallic oil paint on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 17
Currents 2017, oil on linen 50 x 54 inches/127 x 137.2 cm 18
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Envoy 2017, oil on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 20
Slide 2017, oil on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 21
Stride 2017, oil on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 22
Gaggle 2017, oil on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 23
Moonglow 2017, oil on linen 38 x 42 inches/96.5 x 106.7 cm 24
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Quarry 2017, oil on canvas 40 x 45 inches/101.6 x 114.3 cm 26
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Legend 2017, oil on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 28
Shimmer 2017, oil on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 29
Panorama 2014, oil on linen 72 x 151 inches/182.9 x 383.6 cm 30
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Tempest 2018, oil on linen 50 x 54 inches/127 x 137.2 cm 32
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Glimmer 2018, oil and metallic oil paint on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 34
Signal 2018, oil and metallic oil paint on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 35
Polar 2014, oil on linen 20 x 22 inches/50.8 x 55.9 cm 36
Outpost 2014, oil on linen 20 x 22 inches/50.8 x 55.9 cm 37
Atlas 2017, oil on linen 40 x 45 inches/101.6 x 114.3 cm 38
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Frontier 2018, oil on linen 40 x 45 inches/101.6 x 114.3 cm 40
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Trance 2015–2018, oil on linen 50 x 54 inches/127 x 137.2 cm 42
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SK #4 2018, oil and acrylic on fiberglass paper 22 x 30 inches/55.9 x 76.2 cm 44
SK #2 2018, oil and acrylic on fiberglass paper 22 x 30 inches/55.9 x 76.2 cm 45
SK #5 2018, oil and acrylic on fiberglass paper 22 x 30 inches/55.9 x 76.2 cm 46
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SK #3 2018, oil and acrylic on fiberglass paper 22 x 30 inches/55.9 x 76.2 cm 48
SK #1 2018, oil and acrylic on fiberglass paper 22 x 30 inches/55.9 x 76.2 cm 49
Bounty 2018, oil on linen 36 x 40 inches/91.5 x 101.6 cm 50
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Surge 2018, oil and metallic oil paint on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 52
Transit 2018, oil and metallic oil paint on linen 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm 53
Thermal 2014, oil on linen 56 x 61 inches/142.3 x 155 cm 54
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Ignition 2017, oil on linen 20 x 22 inches/50.8 x 55.9 cm 56
Infusion 2017, oil on canvas 40 x 45 inches/101.6 x 114.3 cm 57
August 2014–2015, oil on linen 40 x 44 inches/101.6 x 111.8 cm 58
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Conveyor 2018, oil on linen 36 x 40 inches/91.5 x 101.6 cm 60
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Oxygen 2014, oil on linen 100 x 54 inches/254 x 137.2 cm 62
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JUDITH MURRAY Judith Murray has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and abroad, including solo shows at the legendary Clocktower, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Her paintings have been included in more than thirty museum exhibitions worldwide, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice; and the Museo de Art Moderno, Mexico City. In addition to a Guggenheim Fellowship, Judith Murray is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award for Painting, and the National Endowment for the Arts Award. Murray was inducted into the National Academy in 2009. In 2006 the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Albert Maysles produced the documentary Judith Murray: Phases and Layers, filming the artist working on a large-scale painting. Her work is in the collections of the United States Embassy in Mumbai; the royal family of Abu Dhabi; National Museum of Art, Warsaw; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; the Brooklyn Museum, National Academy Museum, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York Public Library, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and the Philadelphia Museum, Pennsylvania; The Contemporary Museum, Hawaii; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston; and the Walker Art Center, Contemporary Art Museum, Minneapolis.
SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERIES new york 547 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001 tel 212 677 4520 • gallery@sundaramtagore.com
new york 1100 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10028 tel 212 288 2889 • gallery@sundaramtagore.com hong kong 4/F, 57–59 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong tel 852 2581 9678 • hongkong@sundaramtagore.com singapore 5 Lock Road 01–05, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108933 tel 65 6694 3378 • singapore@sundaramtagore.com President and curator: Sundaram Tagore Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Sales director, Singapore: Melanie Taylor Exhibition coordinator/registrar: Julia Occhiogrosso Designer: Russell Whitehead Editorial support: Kieran Doherty Assistant to Judith Murray: Alex Markwith
WWW.SUNDARAMTAGORE.COM Photographs © 2018 Judith Murray Text © 2018 Sundaram Tagore Gallery All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Cover: Gaggle (detail), 2017, oil on linen, 11 x 14 inches/28 x 35.6 cm