drawing and painting blurs. Murillo literally sticks things to his canvas – canvas to canvas or cloth to canvas – and then paints on that, with these extra surfaces wrapping around the sides of the canvases. This texture is his surface. But as well as their deeply personal and original feel as paintings, Murillo has added another dimension to his part in the show. He has placed sheets of unstretched (painted) canvas on the ground next to his stretched canvases, with which we are allowed to touch and interact. This is a refreshing way of personalising the experience by getting rid of some of the formalities of being in an art gallery. But it isn’t just that: it also raises many interesting questions. The first question it raises is about value: are these things on the floor worth the same as the ones on the wall? If they were, it would be at odds with convention. The second question is: should people be allowed to touch these things? This sounds obvious, but when we think about it, poor and ‘uneducated’ people were traditionally subservient, excluded from art by a lack of understanding. Murillo is arguably de-mystifying art and getting rid of academic snobbery. The third and most important point is artistic integrity. Is the stuff on the floor more real, more important, due to the fact that two- dimensional prints of paintings can so easily be made, or simply be viewed on a screen by someone sitting in bed? Murillo’s work best sums up atemporality, although it takes a different slant on it. He does not engage with modern techniques such as modern printing or internet, but he does address the problem of atemporality. If all these artists truly were atemporal in their work, then there would be no need to look at their work; it would be a confusion of ideas and concepts bunged into one, probably rather dull, painting. Murillo ignores this naïve idea, and addresses the problem that painting may face – becoming just a two-dimensional thing. Dance, theatre or even video art could easily replace painting as the highest kind of art, but Murillo addresses this by asking a question – what really matters in painting? And he provides a platform – the touch, the interaction with his work – which provides the viewer with his or her own answer.
ART REVIEW 2015
Ivan Ginzburg (Year 13) ‘Vortex’ (installation) Neon and wire
86
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs