Bio 

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Marta Murray (b. 1996) is a Chicago born painter currently based in Philadelphia. She holds an MFA from the Tyler School of Art (‘26) and BFA from New York University (‘18) with a concentration in Painting and Printmaking. Her work has been exhibited in Chicago, NYC, the Hudson Valley, Philadelphia and Berlin.

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​Statement

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My working process is not unlike a two-way mirror; I project my influences onto surfaces that reflect back their own material agency and meaning. Applying mediums often associated with sign painting, faux finish and stage production onto paper roughly the size of a projector screen or classroom map, I take liberties in re-imaging commercial ad imagery baked into the American psyche.

 

Glossy print advertisements and iconic film posters are scaled up and exploded, scribbled over and diagrammed. This inductive approach traces the cultural significance of marketed material over the last century, observing its misalignment with the reality of its time and ideological and physical decay as it exists today. It is a practice built of equal parts disillusionment and discovery.

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Growing up with a photographer parent, I entered artmaking with an understanding of framing as visual strategy, and later understood its capacity to omit critical context. This lens continues to inform my handling of pop culture imagery, culled from a variety of print sources including LIFE magazine, Playboy, Women’s Day and more.

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Bold drop shadows, illusions of painters tape, and torn edges heighten the sense of artificial construction in my paintings. Logos intermingle with graffiti, magazine clippings and cartoon war planes. Working with found advertisements mirrors the teenage impulse to self-surveil; to learn about oneself from the outside in. These images float within a matrix of pink paint roller marks, simulating a kind of architecture built from fugitive memory and a sense of national imagination.