Quarrel

In his artwork, Matt Murphy plays with an interchange between sculpture and painting. Sculptures are real physical objects. Viewers also recognize objects in paintings as real physical objects even though the painting is simply a flat surface covered in paint. In this way, paintings craft an illusion of reality. Murphy is curious about works such as Spanish polychrome sculptures which mostly depict saints. A viewer first sees these sculptures as objects which are then secondarily enhanced by a painted surface that creates the illusion of light suggesting the transcendence of humanity. In his multi-canvas paintings such as Rabble and Quarrel, Murphy strives to disrupt the illusion of painting by inserting the wall in between elements, allowing viewers to see the artwork as a physical object before immersing themselves in the painted illusion.