Internationally recognized as one of the most important artists of his generation, 87-year-old Robert Murray, Canada’s foremost abstract sculptor, shows how ingenuity conquers the impossible in Between Earth and Sky, on view at Vancouver’s Paul Kyle Gallery until July 29. The show includes a selection of small sculptures, reliefs and drawings, demonstrating Murray’s mastery of material and technique.
Born in Vancouver and raised in Saskatoon, Murray moved to New York early in his career, largely at the suggestion of American colour field painter Barnett Newman, who met Murray at an Emma Lake workshop in Saskatchewan in the late 1950s. Murray was painting landscapes at the time. Newman asked if he had ever thought of sculpture. He hadn’t.
Robert Murray, “Burwash,” 1970
aluminum (artist proof), 24" x 24" x 9" (photo by Kyle Juron)
Encouraged by Newman and inspired by influential American sculptor David Smith, Murray’s early works reflect the modernist aesthetic of the time. His flat steel plates, finished in bright primary colours, are monumental in their simplicity. Form takes precedence over content. Burwash, from 1970, looks almost like a hard-edge painting.
Robert Murray, “Haida,” 1972
painted steel, 17" x 48" x 13" (photo by Kyle Juron)
“I tend to think of my sculpture not as three-dimensional paintings but as three-dimensional colour,” Murray once said, referring to his background as a painter. As he grew older, and more clients clamoured for his massive outdoor sculptures, his palette evolved as did his shapes. Haida, which he produced in 1972, combines the flat and the circular, a theme he repeated throughout his career, including in Blue Columns, 2017, and a 2021 work, Brandywine.
Robert Murray, “Nimbus,” 1978
painted aluminum, 33.5" x 32" x 27.5" (photo by Kyle Juron)
Nimbus, produced six years after Haida, is another turning point in form and execution. Fluid and organic, it envelops space rather than cutting into it. Its complexity adheres to Smith’s philosophy – sculpture is not to be read immediately but experienced as a process of discovery. Murray achieved a crenellated look by working alongside the fabricator, familiarizing himself with the machinery and then finessing every fold and angle of its construction on the factory floor.
“Everybody’s got a roller and a press brake,” says Jonathan Lippincott, Murray’s biographer and the son of the fabricator who worked on Nimbus. But nobody had ever thought of using the machines to create art. “What Bob brought to that technology made it incredible,” says Lippincott. “Manipulating the machines was part of the artistic process.”
Robert Murray, “Hillary,” 1983
painted aluminum, 12" x 48" x 35" (photo by Kyle Juron)
Hillary, destined to become a 20-foot-long installation, is even more complex. Crumpled and curvaceous, it seems to represent a step away from modernism and into the contextual. Murray is often categorized as a modernist, but I don’t completely agree, at least using American critic Clement Greenberg’s definition of modernism as self-critical and devoid of illusionism. Murray’s later works refer to the real world. While Hillary may look like an abstract form, its roof is a landscape inspired by photographs that Murray, a licensed pilot, took from the air.
Robert Murray, “Gum Tree Road,” 2008
painted steel, 30" x 22" (photo by Kyle Juron)
Murray returns to the landscape theme in five steel and aluminum reliefs displayed in a separate room at the gallery. My favourite is Gum Tree Road, a series of horizontal steel plates painted in a rich, almost impenetrable, dark blue. The surface undulates ever so slightly to reveal the outlines of rivers, lakes and fields depending how the light strikes it.
Robert Murray, “Mbishkaad,” 2004
aluminum, 40" x 9" x 13.5" (photo by Kyle Juron)
Mbishkaad, commissioned by the developer of a Toronto hotel and condominium complex, may be the most dramatic work in the show. Murray builds on his love of light, shadow and colour with a ribbon of protruding aluminum shapes that catch the sun, changing hue at different times of the day. A larger version stands 30 feet tall. But the smaller model in the show allows one to imagine how staggering it must be to look up at the evolving light show. ■
Robert Murray, Between Earth and Sky, at the Paul Kyle Gallery in Vancouver from June 10 to July 29, 2023.
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Paul Kyle Gallery (formerly Elan Fine Art)
4-258 East 1 Avenue (Second floor), Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 1A6
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