Kagame Murray, Anthropomorphic (The Dreamer), 2002, acrylic on canvas, 81 x 48 inches. Courtesy of Articsok Gallery
Kagame Murray’s art sits on the boundary between two dimensional surfaces and three dimensional objects made complex by an intensification of illumination. The early works Africa and Anthropomorphic (The Dreamer) bring explorations of colour, forms and texture. In Venus there is a dominance of surface and colour. In the Typewriter Disaster Series, here represented by #2, #6, #7, #28, there is a shift from two to three dimensions with allusions to a fourth. Discarded typewriter ribbons (found objects) are recycled as photographs. Space becomes a pliable material, to be manipulated by the artist.
Kagame Murray, Typewriter Disaster Series #7, 1999, photography on archival fugi paper, 72 x 48 inches. Courtesy of Articsok Gallery
An underlying theme of ‘light’, the density of The Impacted Mirror point back to ancient Egypt, the tropical world of Africa and the presence of masks as constructions. Triptych Sockets seems to be an exploration of meaning which comes with a change in context. In The Impacted Mirror: The Violence of Life the theme of light becomes the subject matter. Here light, as with the abstract expressionists of the mid twentieth century, becomes an exploration of luminosity as displayed in the artificial lighting of the urban strip mall. Colour is shifted to the incandescence of a volcano. Representation gives way to the glare and the actuality of the highway. This is light that is about illumination and simply about itself – rather than showing the quality of the object. Red, the color itself, rather than a red object, displays energy, nuclear explosions and the sun in close-up. This light is not used as the basis of seeing something, but as the theme of a daring glance at the sun. This is light intensified into something material and becomes the absolute found object.
Kagame Murray, The Impacted Mirror: The Violence of Life, 2013 174 Floating points: film and television re-directional materials, wood,acrylic rods, bullet proof glass, 7’10” x 6’10” x 8 1/4″. Courtesy of Articsok Gallery.
Kagame is on an adventure, with many journeys of discovery. Antithetically Murray channels the truth of everyday horrors to create “the beautiful” and allows the viewer to gaze into his mirror and recognize their rumination.
Kagame Murray: Triptych sockets,1996, photography on archival fugi paper, 96 x 29 1/2 inches. Courtesy of Articsok Gallery.
R.M. Lacovia
*Exhibition information: September 4 – October 4, 2014, Articsok Gallery, 1697 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed – Sat, 12 – 6 p.m.