La galerie particulière

Presentation

Kalaloch Lodge sits on a rough coastline in the Pacific Northwest, part of the Olympic National Park. A decade ago, I was entering the lodge restaurant and discovered a photo of my great grandparents from the exact same site. In the grainy image, they stand among their logging camp kitchen garden, looking stoic and overworked. I began to sand away at the sheen of the story of their American Dream and the camps they worked in, which were filled with labor strife, impoverishment, and bits and pieces of hard won success. The sheer scope of what happened in the West as populations from the East pushed to the margins of North America is a staggering history of discovery, ignorance, reinvention, loss, and the harsh transformation of a landscape and people. This narrative and the factual, idealized, absurd, and uncomfortable ways in which we Americans choose to craft tales about our country has defined what I navigate.

Many of the photographs, paintings, and films that deal with the early history of the United States are saturated with ideas of false hope and impossible perfection. The country is particularly good at rendering a vision of itself that conveniently edits out the messy, unwanted and uncomfortable truths of our past. The Hudson River School painter Albert Bierstadt, for example, created a grand version of America that was part reality, part heroic invention, and full of a colonial, power-hungry view of the country. Bierstadt has been a frequent target of admiration as well as cynical reference in the drawings. I nod to these masterworks, recognizing that the ambition and possibility of the United States can be seen within these depictions of drama and wonder. Many are resampled and coagulated with individuals and moments that are at odds with the whitewashed sublime. Through a mash up of images, I hope to cut away at the neat and tidy narrative of progress and domination and create moments that deal with the abundant misinformation, deep confusion, genuine absurdity and billowing mass that has always kept this country on its toes.

As our world leaks and creaks forward, landscape can act as the ultimate term and representation of the joys and foibles of our actions. Landscape is an aesthetic ideal, an edited view of reality that suits the maker —in essence, a fiction. For me, the word has come to define our use of images and stories to convince ourselves of who we are, what we know to be true, and what we wish was fact.

These drawings are re-tellings of histories, past images, heroes, and idiots. They are obsessively detailed puzzles and scenarios intended to honor a lineage of grand gestures and soapboxing and expose the deficiencies and dangers of doing so in the first place.

 

 

Ethan Murrow

Biography

Born in 1976. Lives & works in Boston.


EDUCATION

2002
- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. Master of Fine Arts degree in drawing, painting and sculpture

1998
- Carleton College, Northfield, MN. B.A. in Studio Arts with a focus on painting and printmaking, Cum Laude with Distinction in The Arts (highest award given in the arts)

 

 

EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)

2018
- Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, USA
- La Galerie Particulière, Paris

2017
- Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, USA
- Kohler Art Center, Kenosha, USA
- Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Roanoke, USA
- Slete, Culver City, USA

2016               
- Jacksonville MOCA, USA
- "Journeys in/to Alternative Worlds", Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, USA
- Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA
- Winston Wachter, New York, USA

2015
- Feinberg Art Wall, wall drawing, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA
- "Hankering for the Past", La Galerie Particulière, Paris
- Slete, Culver City, USA
- Winston Wachter, Seattle, USA

2014
- Winston Wachter, New York, USA

- Slete, Culver City, USA

2013
-"American Ego", La Galerie Particulière, Paris
- The Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences, Charleston, USA

2012
 - Obsolete Gallery, Venise, USA

2011
 - Winston Wachter, New York, USA

- "The Universe - Seeing is Knowing", The Weitz Center Museum, Carleton College, Northfield, USA
 - "Momentum House", La Galerie Particulière, Paris

2010    

- "Fast Forward - Four for the Future", Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, USA
 - Winston Wachter Gallery, Seattle, USA
 - Obsolete Gallery, Venise, USA
 - Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, USA

- "But is it Drawing?", Brattleboro Museum of Art, Brattleboro, USA

2009
 - Winston Wachter Fine Art, New York, USA
- "H20 Film on Water", Reeves Contemporary, New York, USA
- "On Paper", Jenkins Johnson, New York, USA


2008

- "New Prints", The International Print Center, New York, USA
 - D3 Gallery, Santa Monica, USA
 - Obsolete Gallery, Venise, USA

2007
 - Winston Wachter Fine Art, Seattle, USA
 - Bucheon Gallery, San Francisco, USA

2006
 - Firehouse Center For The Visual Arts, Burlington, USA

2005
 - Obsolete Gallery, Venice, USA
 - Youngblood Gallery, Atlanta, USA
 - Reeves Contemporary, New York, USA

- "The Ever Changing Landscape", The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft Louisville, USA

2004
 - MPG Contemporary, Boston, MA 2004 Building a Legacy The Bemis Center, Omaha, USA

- "Building a Legacy", The Bemis Center, Omaha, USA
 - Robert Rentz Gallery, Richmond, USA

- "Land", Colby Sawyer College Art Gallery, New London, USA

2003
 - Aiken Center for the Arts, Aiken, USA
 - Spheris Gallery, Bellows Falls, USA
 - "Space Lab", Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, USA

- "Charcoal", Reeves Contemporary, New York, USA
- The Viewing Room, New York, USA
- "Violent Violence", Gallery Art et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, Netherlands
 - Doll-Anstadt Gallery, Burlington, USA

2002
 - Mitten Gallery, Harrisonburg, USA

- "Coloring Words", The Fotogalerie, Fringe Club, Hong Kong
- "New Currents in Contemporary Art", Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, USA

2001

- International Sculpture Center at Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, USA
- MPG Contemporary, Boston, USA

2000
 - Firehouse Center For The Visual Arts, Burlington, USA

 


FILMOGRAPHY

 

2008
- "Dust", Official Selection, 46th annual New York Film Festival, New York, NY, co-writer, actor and narrator, produced with Harvest Films, Santa Monica, CA, USA



RESIDENCIES, FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS

 

2017
- Stein Prize National Emerging Artist, Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, FL, USA

2016
- Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Drawing, USA
- Artist in Residence, Facebook Inc. EMEAA office, Dublin, Ireland

2015
- Artist in Residence, Fellowship Ballinglen Foundation, BallyCastle, Ireland

2011
- Award for Teaching Excellence, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA
- Artist in Residence at the Red Stables, courtesy of the City of Dublin, invited to create limited edition lithographs with master printers, supported by SMFA Faculty Enrichment Grant, The Graphic Studio, Dublin, Ireland

2007
 - Artist in Residence, invited to create three limited edition lithographs with master printers
 - The Tamarind Institute, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

2004
 - Artist in Residence, Fellowship, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, USA

2004
 - Artist in Residence, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, USA

2001
 - Outstanding Student Achievement Award for Sculpture, The International Sculpture Center, Hamilton, NJ, USA

1998
 - The Sigrid and Erling Larsen Award for creative excellence in the arts, Carleton College, Northfield, MN, USA

1996
 - Hyslop-Warnholtz Artist's Grant, for travel and intensive study in Ireland, Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughn, Ireland, Carleton College Art Department, Northfield, USA

 


COLLECTIONS 

 

- Cornell Fine Arts Museum
- The University of New Mexico
- The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
- Liberty Media
- The Guggenheim Foundation
- 20th Century Fox
- Harvest Films
- Burton Snowboards
- Burj Dubai – EMAAR
- The Copper Press


MONOGRAPHS

 

- "Ethan Murrow", Hatje Cantz (Berlin) with an essay by Ruth Erickson, assistant Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA, 2015

- "Walk the Line: The Art of Drawing", by Magma Books in association with Elephant, 2013
- "Ethan Murrow", Los Angeles: Obsolete Books, 116 pages with essays by Ric Kasini Kadour and Ray Azoulay, 2008

Learn more

Press

Mine aux trésors

Mine aux trésors

16.12.2015

Télérama sortir

Expos Coup de Coeur

Expos Coup de Coeur

01.09.2013

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