Brian Murphy at Suyama Space and Platform

Art in America, April, 2005 by Suzanne Beal

Known in the Northwest for the fleshy self-portraits that won him the Seattle Art Museum's Betty Bowen Memorial Award in 2001, Brian Murphy uses conventional subject matter to achieve unconventional results. He joins a long line of painters who have used themselves as subject, most recently Jenny Saville. Like Saville, Murphy works in both watercolor and oil, often addressing the amplitude of his figure. But while she explores issues related to feminist theory, Murphy's works are intentionally elusive; painting from direct observation with a hand-held mirror, he addresses the inherent volatility of the self.

In Facing, at Suyama Space, Murphy expanded his normal scale to take advantage of the fin-de-siecle building's wide-open and rugged interior. The site-specific installation comprised six watercolor self-portraits, each 9 by 5 feet, hung in groups of three at opposite ends of the room. In response to the architectural volume, the upper two thirds of each is left bare, while the bottom third depicts the artist from the mouth up, his features seeming on the verge of slipping off the paper entirely. Each massive likeness is made up of pastel pools of color in which the billowing folds of Murphy's face are presented as majestic landscapes. His fractional portraits seemed to loom over the viewer although they were displayed below eye-level--a dizzying perspective, as close physically as it was remote conceptually. Murphy's expressions metamorphosed before our eyes, capturing states of boredom, rage and sheer fatigue. Watercolor proves to be a compatible medium for the artist's purposes: the ephemeral effect of his pigments echoes the changeability of his study.

In a show of new works at Platform Gallery, oil and watercolor self-portraits similar to those seen at Suyama Space hung side by side, with the largest oil, Untitled 5 (66 by 78 inches), prominently displayed at the far end of the long, narrow gallery, where it presided majestically over the room. Executed in swaths of pure color that threaten to dissolve into abstraction, the oils have been scraped down to the surface. The opacity of the paint is thus radically reduced, resulting in a transparent, watercolorlike effect. In the small oil Untitled 2 (16 by 20 inches), Murphy's face is superimposed on a background that is white above and a rosy flesh color below, a neat division that seems to detach the face and emphasize its ethereality. In Untitled 12 (22 by 30 inches), a watercolor on paper, Murphy's impish regard is directed at the viewer, the almost palpable pudginess of his features contrasting sharply with the freedom of his painterly gesture, which is manifested in a large, thick drip that careens to the edge of the sheet before disappearing altogether. Challenged by the perpetual mutability of his own likeness, Murphy sets his sights on the mirror for the sheer joy of the hunt.