Wil Murray
Calgary-born Wil Murry is a mixed-media artist who employs painting and photography to explore how any subject’s transition in space affects how viewers understand it. He also investigates the ways that multiple levels of obscuring changes meaning, as with his series Collaged Drape, in which he repaints work, incompletely covers it with fabric, photographs it in black and white, and then finally paints over the prints.
Describing one of his approaches to art creation, Murray writes, “When I need one paint stroke, I make twenty of them on a piece of glass, to be peeled up and applied later. When I need photos, I shoot and print a whole roll of thirty-six exposures. When I want figures and textures from old magazines I spend a day processing them, cutting out hundreds of possible images. Even labour-intensive weaving is done longer than needed.”
After studying painting at the Alberta College of Art and Design (1997 – 2000), Murray launched a highly successful career that has brought his work to audiences across Canada and in the United States, England, and Germany. He has mounted several solo exhibitions including Not a Photo at The Hole in New York City, The Enemies of the Novel at the Back Gallery Project in Vancouver, Please Boss Remember Me at Vitrine in London, and Last Summer I Built a 1:8 Scale Model of Your Vagina at the Staatsgalerie Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. As well, he has participated in numerous group shows such as Sought at Jarvis Hall Fine Art in Calgary, The Painting Project at Galerie de l’UQAM (Université du Québec á Montreal), and Broadcast at Funkhaus Nalepastrasse in Berlin.
Murray’s works dwell in the collections of Rogers Insurance Collection in Calgary, the Bilton Centre for Contemporary Art in Red Deer, the Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto, and Kenworth Moffet in Stanford, Connecticut.
Describing one of his approaches to art creation, Murray writes, “When I need one paint stroke, I make twenty of them on a piece of glass, to be peeled up and applied later. When I need photos, I shoot and print a whole roll of thirty-six exposures. When I want figures and textures from old magazines I spend a day processing them, cutting out hundreds of possible images. Even labour-intensive weaving is done longer than needed.”
After studying painting at the Alberta College of Art and Design (1997 – 2000), Murray launched a highly successful career that has brought his work to audiences across Canada and in the United States, England, and Germany. He has mounted several solo exhibitions including Not a Photo at The Hole in New York City, The Enemies of the Novel at the Back Gallery Project in Vancouver, Please Boss Remember Me at Vitrine in London, and Last Summer I Built a 1:8 Scale Model of Your Vagina at the Staatsgalerie Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. As well, he has participated in numerous group shows such as Sought at Jarvis Hall Fine Art in Calgary, The Painting Project at Galerie de l’UQAM (Université du Québec á Montreal), and Broadcast at Funkhaus Nalepastrasse in Berlin.
Murray’s works dwell in the collections of Rogers Insurance Collection in Calgary, the Bilton Centre for Contemporary Art in Red Deer, the Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto, and Kenworth Moffet in Stanford, Connecticut.