Murray Green

In Green’s process, translucent resin is used to coat and preserve the dense layers of paint which are left to ooze, drip and slip from the support; by extending the resin several inches beyond the backing board, Green is also able to “frame” the painting with a slick layered plastic edge, revealing the profile of the encapsulated specimen, paint. As Green puts it “It is the ephemeral moment where liquid turns to solid and the gesture becomes specimen.”

The resinitself is richly hued, allowing the colour fields to give the illusion of water,candies orstratospheric conditions. The surface is glossy and seductive like icing on the cake, but on close inspection an uneven texture of organic forms (wax) preludes; further preventing the viewer’s clarity of understanding the world below. The hardened, toxic surfaces of Green’s “Resin” paintings are belied by their seemingly pliable, candy undulations.

Green’s works consist of an overlay of the organic and the artificial, activated by the poured resin surface that captures and reflects light.The action of painting is the gesture and the rest isalchemy.

Murray Green creates works that are a proffering of vagaries, lines are blurred and contradictions presented.Meaning is evasive and illusion greets every glance.The three dimensional properties resin enables Green to create literally represent an arena in which ideas can come and go; FLUX.Green transports the observer in a way that takes the work into another dimension, positionunknown;Third Watch.

“It is my aim to convey a complex confusion of visual languages where nothing is certain.”

Artbash, Love that Icky Paint by John Hurrell “My favourite paintings in the show are the oozy paint and resin works by Auckland artist Murray Green, and the sagging, disintegrating grids by Englishman Alexis Harding. They both exploit the viscous, liquefying aspects of paint when co-ordinated with gravity, and Harding’s densely veined wrinkles of dark, oil paint skin in particular are rich in microcosmic detail. Green’s globule forms have an opaque waxlike tactility and seem subterranean, while Harding’s bunched up rolls of ‘skin’ looks as if they were made with crushed coal and gritty sump oil. Green and Harding’s paintings are conspicuously sensual, and draw you in to ponder about how they were made”.