THE UNIVERSE IN ALL WE TOUCH

Greg Murr is fascinated by the outer reaches and the minutiae of the physical world, things so extremely beyond the reference of human scale, that if it weren’t for the sciences, we would be left uncomprehending. In something as seemingly facile as a peony bloom, he finds suggestions of radial motion, radial symmetry, compression and expansion, levity versus mass, corporeality versus immateriality―characteristics reminiscent of so many properties pertaining to both cosmological phenomena and quantum physics. Understanding little, one can nevertheless marvel at the wonders of tangible phenomena, where a simple blossom—and all else that exists—transcends taxonomy as its constituent atoms are traced back nearly 13.8 billion years to the beginning of our space-time universe.

The easily accessible subject matter of blossoms, superimposed or otherwise re-orchestrated, here addresses such cosmological phenomena as dark matter/ dark energy that fills what was formerly perceived as empty space, gravitational lensing caused by galactic superclusters, and the cosmic microwave background radiation that speaks to the geometry of the universe. These pictures are meant to address the observable world outside the threshold of our everyday awareness with the hope that an expanded perspective will ultimately enable us a more humbled, if collective, view of our humanity.

Greg Murr is a visual artist concentrating in drawing, painting and print media. Responding to local phenomena, he looks at discrete systems that make up our surroundings and how their structures shape our perceptions, ideas, and behavior. Murr’s work has appeared in exhibitions at the Austin Museum of Art (2011), the Arkansas Art Center (2008) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2005). He has twice served as a Visiting Artist/ Instructor at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, and has been a Resident Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Robert M. MacNamara Foundation and the Morris Graves Foundation. His work is in permanent collections that include the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Sheldon Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Tamarind Institute and Flatbed Press have published editions of his work. Murr received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Mexico (1997) and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wake Forest University (1993).The universe in all we touch