Review

A profile of Molly Murphy's Spatial Constrictions

The architectural firm BNIM has been sharing its south- and east-facing windows with artists for nearly a decade since moving to the Power and Light Building at 14th and Baltimore. Pictured are two of Molly Murphy's drawings from "Spatial Constrictions," on view through September 17, 2010. Photo: T. Abeln

10@BNIM
Kansas City, Missouri
August 6 — September 17, 2010

Historically, discomfort yields creativity for Molly Murphy. And so it remains, with one significant variance. Murphy's current discomfort — the bad behavior of humans on this planet — has compelled her to abandon her trademarks: her sullen, sickly female faces; her symbols and motifs and vermilion streaks; and even her beloved canvases and oils — for meticulous graphite drawings of hair.

A turning away from portraiture? Until now, the human face (usually her own), has been Murphy's primary stock in trade. In her latest works, only a vestige of the human remains: hair. Landscapes of hair, cultivated fields of hair, disembodied tresses floating in space …

"Hair is memory," says Murphy in a recent interview at the Bourgeois Pig in Lawrence, Kansas, where she has curated monthly art exhibitions since 2007. "Hair stores remnants of everything we ingest. It is my idea of human connection, a shared characteristic."

Nineteen drawings and one text piece, which is entitled This will all be what we make it, fill the 10 windows of BNIM's sidewalk gallery in the Power and Light building in downtown Kansas City. "Almost all the drawings are 22 inches by 30 inches, on 140# water color paper," Murphy notes. "Only one is on canvas."

Molly Murphy, "Garden," graphite on paper, 2010. Image: courtesy of the artist

The surreal and meticulously rendered Garden resembles a corn-rowed scalp laid flat, strands bound into tussocks like baby cabbages.

Spring features the human form, but from the back — no eyes to tell the story. A braid flows down a woman's slender back, filaments unraveling at the hips and snaking around the forearms to bind them to her body. Without Murphy's accusing face to place the image in a purely personal context, however, Spring implies a broader, human bondage, a general helplessness.

Molly Murphy, "Spring," grapite on paper, 2010. Image: courtesy of the artist

"Look at the sh*t we're in now," Murphy says. "The only common moral theme that you find in every culture is responsibility to the earth. We are obviously failing in that responsibility. This series expresses serious frustration with the state of things today."

These are strong words from someone who, until now, has denied any intentional political statements in her work. Murphy's paintings of reproachful women have always been easy targets for the label of Feminism, a label Murphy fiercely eschews for the more humanistic Womanism, a perspective based on experience, not ideology.

But in Spatial Constrictions, Murphy takes a strong political stance, albeit expressed with uncharacteristic simplicity. "I'm getting back to basics," Murphy says; "I'm going feral. I've lost the urge to participate in a lot of social scenarios."

As Spring so delicately makes clear, Murphy has indeed turned her back on humankind's self-imposed bondage. And even without her signature symbols and glowering faces, she again succeeds in transmitting her disapproval through her art. For Murphy, life and art are permanently bound — one begets and nurtures the other.

Molly Murphy, "Flint Hills," graphite on paper, 2010. Image: courtesy of the artist

"Right now, greed is power in this world. People are blind, and purposefully ignorant," Murphy says. "I'll put people back in my work when they start behaving better."

Author's Note:

A righteous shout-out for the venue: "BNIM has been hosting the work of local and regional artists in our display windows, 10@BNIM, since we moved into the space in January of 2001," says BNIM's Keri Maginn. "What better way to use the windows?" More of that in the world, please. I'm sure Molly Murphy would agree.

-re-

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