Between the Acts: John Murphy has created visually austere but conceptually complex configurations of found images, objects and texts using post cards, books, film stills, painting and poetry. The Players: this exhibition is comprised of new mixed media paintings and a sculpture that extend Sarmento's continuing fascination with the transgression of boundaries and the dichotomies those transgressions often illuminate.
John Murphy
Between the Acts
John Murphy's practice can be characterised through his use of existing material, such as reproductions and ready-mades. For this exhibition, his fourth at Lisson Gallery since 1985, Murphy has created visually austere but conceptually complex configurations of found images, objects and texts using post cards, books, film stills, painting and poetry.
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Juliao Sarmento
The Players
This exhibition is comprised of new mixed media paintings and a sculpture that extend Sarmento's continuing fascination with the transgression of boundaries and the dichotomies those transgressions often illuminate, such as spirituality and eroticism, sexuality and morality, speech and dialogue. By silk-screening fragments of text from an essay by the French thinker Maurice Blanchot directly onto the surface of the paintings, he integrates language with his iconic images.
Transgression in dialogue, as articulated by Blanchot and interpreted by Sarmento, is not merely rebellion or a breakdown of limits of speech, but also a play for two players where the self is pushed to its own limits, uncovering new boundaries in an infinite progression resulting not in the liberation of self, but in new structures that must in turn be transgressed. Juliao Sarmento lives and works in Estoril, Portugal. Born in 1948, he has exhibited worldwide since his first show in 1969. He has been included in two Documentas and three Venice Biennales. His work is represented in public and private collections worldwide, including The Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, New York; MoMA, New York; the Muse'e National d'Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
Lisson Gallery
29 & 52-54 Bell Street - London