AILEEN MURPHY
b. 1984, IrelandIn her distinctive approach to painting, Murphy generates imagery through a combination of slow layering and fast applications of oil paint, animating a delicate urgency and sparking sensations of both epiphany and discomfort. Fictive characters are the focal points of Murphy’s paintings. The figures fluctuate under the viewer’s eye, revealing and concealing themselves behind and via the materiality of the medium. The paintings have evolved through Murphy’s experimental exploration of paint. In her hands, painting is an act of imaginative action—colour and gesture are live wires. The images committed to canvas arrive there through an ongoing process of reinvention. A true identity is revealed only to then conceal itself and re-emerge as something other but no less true.
Aileen Murphy (b. 1984, Sligo, Ireland) lives and works in Berlin. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin (2007) and then studied under Amy Sillman and Monika Baer at Städelschule Frankfurt, graduating in 2018. Exhibitions include: Flush, Amanda Wilkinson, London (2020), PANTING, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin, Ireland (2019), Bounty, with Diana Copperwhite, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin, Ireland (2018), Naked Cheerleaders in My Chest, Deborah Schamoni, Munich, Germany (2017), Summertime Witchcraft, with Anders Dickson, The Fort, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A (2016), Hands Laid On, with Kathy Tynan, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin, Ireland (2016), Stuffing, with Bradley Davies, Johanne/Staedelschule project-space, Frankfurt am main, Germany (2015), Guano Fruit, Ormond Studios, Dublin, Ireland (2013).
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