CIARÁN MURPHY

Beginning each painting with a process of cutting and collaging different symbols and motifs across the canvas, Murphy allows competing foregrounds and backgrounds to merge unexpectedly. In this way, each painting is realised through the union of visual elements that might be jarring and harmonious in equal measure. Once a desired subject reveals itself, Murphy sets about rendering it in oils, often utilising a range of techniques, from areas of impasto and passages of scumbling, to the scraping and sweeping of paint from the surface, dissolving the absolute clarity of the subject and allowing the image to fade away from easy perception. Murphy’s paintings therefore engage with sight itself, asking what the human eye can distinguish that a camera lens or computer screen, for instance, might not.

Ciarán Murphy received his BA at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin (IE) in 2003 and his MA in Visual Arts Practices (MAVIS), IADT, Dublin (IE) in 2005.

Solo exhibitions include: still, weight, thing, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); this appear, GRIMM, London (UK); Solid Gone, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL); Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; The Model, Sligo and Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (IE); there, there now, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL); Hundreds of Nature, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); Plainsight, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL); A Round Now, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, NY (US); The Paradise, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (IE); All That’s Air Melts Into Solid, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL); Ciarán Murphy, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (IE); March, Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin (IE); Ciarán Murphy, Cerealart, Philadelphia, PA (US); and Ciarán Murphy, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL (US).

Selected collections: AzkoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); the Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin (IE); Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin (IE); MOVE, Amsterdam (NL); Roberts Institute of Art (RIA), London (UK) among others.

Courtesy GRIMM, Amsterdam/London/New York.