 |
Elizabeth Murray: Internal and External Worlds
Motion is the subject of Elizabeth Murray's art. Pressure,
pushing, and pulling are words frequently used to describe inner struggle
as well as the relationship between internal elements and external boundaries.
Using domestic objects to create environments of motion, she creates chaotic
abstract combinations in which jumbled chairs, shoes, cups, and tables interact
in space evoking a feeling of domestic tension.
The subject of her work exposes her female experience and perspective,
yet Murray insists that the primacy of her work is formal. Here, Murray's
emotional projection onto the cup, and the cup's taking on its own emotional
life are set in a context of Murray's intellectual concerns: the formal challenge
of allowing the structure of the cup to remain fragmented while it defines
the table and the room.
As Murray has built larger and more complicated shaped
surfaces, on and into which she devises illusion and deconstructs objects,
the tension between inner and outer worlds extends beyond Murray, into the
viewer's world: "the viewer is required to reconcile physical and visual
forms with narrative."
It is through this interplay of the internal and external,
and their ambiguous boundaries, that tension seeks release. The resulting
pushing and pulling thus creates a visual perpetual motion between the
images, the surfaces, the objects, and the mysteries of Elizabeth Murray's
work. The relationship between the internal and exterior worlds is always
left a bit uncertain as to the dialog between the form, the meaning, and
the boundaries of each.
She acknowledges the significant influence of comics in her work, which most
often comments not on popular issues, but personal events. At the same time
her cartoon-like forms connect her to 60's Pop.
|
|
