JOHN MURPHY    

Cut from the Visible…An Indefinable Odour…

2nd March – 20th April 2024

The gallery is pleased to present from Saturday 2th March an exposition of recent works by John Murphy, whose work is research on being and its ambiguities, on time as well as on the notion of time, the subconscious time which generates a work of art.

While John Murphy plays on the theme of resemblance and difference - using existing materials such as reproductions, old film stills and postcards - his work evokes nostalgia and absence with exquisitely refined precision. But it's what happens in the in-between of the image, where meaning is created, that interests the artist in his latest series, Cut from the Visible … An Indefinable Odour … in which John Murphy draws a parallel with a text by Alain Badiou, from his book Petit Manuel d’Esthétique : « A film operates through what it withdraws from the visible. The image is first cut from the visible. Movement is held up, suspended, arrested. Cutting is more essential than presence — not only through the effect of editing, but already, from the start, both by framing and by the controlled purge of the visible. It is of absolute importance that the flowers cinema displays (as in one of Visconti's sequences) be flowers, that they be absent from every bouquet. I have seen them, these flowers, but the precise modality of their captivity to the cut brings forth, indivisibility, both their singularity and their ideality.»

John Murphy, born in 1945, lives and works in London. His work is represented in numerous international public collections, including the Tate Gallery in London (with 11 works), Mudam in Luxembourg, the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Carré d'Art in Nîmes, the Musée des Beaux Arts in Nantes and the Musée d'Art Contemporain in St Etienne.