Like in nature itself, there are no boundaries or divisions between the mixed-media creations of Todd Murphy; every work blends into the others physically and metaphorically in a wonderfully harmonious symbiosis. The artist’s ongoing solo show at Marc Straus fuses painting, photography, live bits of nature and other found objects to explore our surrounding world in the vein of a “19th century Naturalist” (individuals who traveled the world exploring and documenting the far reaches of nature), according to the show’s press release.
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From Gracious, an enormous oil painting of a tiger leaping towards a calmly seated individual in what appears to be a wheat field, to his Murmurations series, double-sided works depicting the fragile elegance of dresses overlaid with different motifs from nature and sailboats, a sense of lingering adventure infuses Murphy’s creations. Unlike a more typical 'gallery artwork,’ which may seem comfortably at home within its white-walled confines, Murphy’s pieces have a sort of contained energy that seemingly begs to be released from their placid exhibiting rooms and set out into the boundless outside world.
Perhaps this feeling comes from the sprawling antlers made of branches in Samuel or the protruding ship sails in Murmurations (Regatta), or maybe this feeling is a reflection of the artist’s own history, a somewhat nomadic individual who was born in Chicago, shipped off to Georgia as a child, and currently residing in Brooklyn today. But more important than his up-and-down movement throughout the U.S., Murphy has also “traveled extensively to the far reaches of the world, collecting, photographing, and fastidiously cataloging melting glaciers, aviary species, exotic fruits, and more,” in the words of the exhibition’s press release.
The way the artist poetically talks about his work feels appropriate for someone who has traversed the globe, sounding more like a wise, mythical character from a fiction novel than your average Brooklyn-based artist: “For many years I have been playing with the painterly world and the sculptural one. The tactile, physical, dimensional aspect of my practice settles my urge to make. Evidence of the hand,” Murphy poetically reveals to The Creators Project.
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“It’s a very different proposition than my paintings, which seek to deal with formal issues such as transparency, luminosity, iridescence, depth, illusion. Combining them with different ways is my ‘play,’ my learning. Playing with redundant images is akin to a monk in the woods counting pine straw.” The artist adds. “In terms of materials, both objects and materials can have a mythological effect on me. The carbonization of the surface of things such as the charred drawing table in the exhibition suggest transformation and rebirth, in the same way that a forest fire can regenerate an ecosystem.”
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