Marta Murray
“Desktop No. 2,” 96” x 108” , ink, flashe, colored pencil, and spraypaint on backdrop paper
Marta Murray’s recent large-scale work combines printmaking, painting and drawing on backdrop paper. Superimposing imagery found in Women's magazines and film advertisements from the 60's with her own photos of store windows and studio worktables, the artist maps her relationship to manufactured desire and systems of power.
Murray challenges the weight paper can hold, enlarging objects from her desk to human scale and casting gargantuan shadows behind leaflets and ink bottles. Through this process of scaling, she holds a magnifying glass to the details of an otherwise overlooked object– a mannequin bust emerging from a foldout table in Manhattan, a stack of yearbook cards of the same woman, a paintbrush. She mines imagery from both public and private spaces with an eye of suspicion, often including her own reflection and "editing hand" as a means of implicating herself. By the same token, Murray leans into the artist playing God trope, awarding significance and volume to the artifacts of her existence.
Marta Murray
Marta Murray (b. 1996) is a painter from Chicago, IL. In 2018 she received her BFA from New York University with a concentration in Painting and Printmaking. Her studio recently moved from NYC to Philadelphia, where she is a current MFA candidate at the Tyler School of Art ('26).
In tandem with her own practice, Marta has provided support as a studio assistant to Jonathan Berger, Marlene McCarty, and most notably Rico Gatson. Her work has been exhibited in Chicago, NYC, the Hudson Valley, Philadelphia and Berlin.