Wil Murray’s interdisciplinary practice oscillates between the mediums of painting, photography and installation. Utilizing found photographs and books to expound an elaborate narrative, Murray often paints with vintage photographic oils, working interchangeably between original plates and large format photographic reproductions. This has developed into a deconstructed painting methodology.
Murray employs the techniques and principles of Beat-era cut-ups to the isolated paint stroke, separating it from the ground, and then photographing, bending and collaging it into a multidimensional site-specific painting installation. Murray describes this method as a test of the fidelity of the image, leaving the viewer to discern between the two: the ‘source’ and its manipulated, hyper-rendered extrapolation as a distorted, dimensional composition.
Wil Murray was born in Calgary and studied drawing at the Alberta College of Art + Design. He has exhibited across Canada and internationally, including at the National Gallery of Canada, The Hole in New York and the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Solo exhibitions include Please Boss Remember Me, VITRINE, London, UK, Die Welt In Farben, p|m Gallery, Toronto and Last Summer I Build A 1:8 Scale Model of Your Vagina, Staatsgalerie Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, Germany. Murray’s work was presented in Future Station: 2015 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, and he received an honourable mention in the 2008 RBC Canadian Painting Competition. Murray is currently living and working in Okotoks.