Murmuration

“I’m interested in connection, which is a provocation of the art world in a way. Critics and writers are not at all interested in beauty. They find it outdated, I find it to be the opposite.”

-TODD MURPHY

September 28, 2015

If I paint a woman, then it already starts to define the narrative…..If it's the dress, people can finish the narrative themselves.

TODD MURPHY 2011

OCTOBER 28, 2014

“The dress, the stag, the birds: These are images that can mean different things to different people."

TODD MURPHY AJC 2011, Forbes 2016

Murphy's Murmurations series deftly illustrates the metaphorical leap from the everyday object to the visual associations embedded within it.

SEPH RODNEY “Seeing Spectral Visions in Fulsome Skirts”, Hyperallergic, 2016

Brooklyn Navy Yard Studio
September 8, 2015

Brooklyn Navy Yard Studio
December 1, 2015

Brooklyn Navy Yard Studio
December 3, 2015

Brooklyn Navy Yard Studio
February 19, 2016

Brooklyn Navy yard studio
February 9, 2016

Brooklyn Navy Yard Studio
October 4, 2016

Brooklyn Navy Yard
October 4, 2016
Starry Night

Using the dress, a culturally loaded motif, Murphy starts a narrative that touches upon grand themes of nature, technology, and humanity over the past two hundred years. The skirts are clear and shaped like bell jars that encase free standing sculptures.

Kate Murphy Art Muse NYC
Murphy's Murmurations series deftly illustrates the metaphorical leap from the everyday object to the visual associations embedded within it.

Seph Rodney
Seeing Spectral Visions in Fulsome Skirts, Hyperallergic 2016
Murphy's work feels anachronistic, like it's swimming against a contemporary tide that moves toward a shore of disenchantment. Our culture constantly reminds us of the ugly underbelly of things. Murphy lets us instead be bewitched.

Seph Rodney
Seeing Spectral Visions in Fulsome Skirts, Hyperallergic 2016
The exhibition culminates in the final room, which unveils the artist’s latest Murmurations series. Using the dress, a culturally loaded motif, Murphy starts a narrative that touches upon grand themes of nature, technology, and humanity over the past two hundred years.

Kate Murphy
Art Fuse 2016
Murphy’s studio is filled with dress forms, dresses, bell-shaped skirts and women’s bodices made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In his work, women stand for humanity.

—Barbara Stehle

Murmuration

If I paint a woman, then it already starts to define the narrative…..If it's the dress, people can finish the narrative themselves.

“The dress, the stag, the birds: These are images that can mean different things to different people."

Murphy's Murmurations series deftly illustrates the metaphorical leap from the everyday object to the visual associations embedded within it.

Using the dress, a culturally loaded motif, Murphy starts a narrative that touches upon grand themes of nature, technology, and humanity over the past two hundred years. The skirts are clear and shaped like bell jars that encase free standing sculptures.

Murphy's Murmurations series deftly illustrates the metaphorical leap from the everyday object to the visual associations embedded within it.

Murphy's work feels anachronistic, like it's swimming against a contemporary tide that moves toward a shore of disenchantment. Our culture constantly reminds us of the ugly underbelly of things. Murphy lets us instead be bewitched.

The exhibition culminates in the final room, which unveils the artist’s latest Murmurations series. Using the dress, a culturally loaded motif, Murphy starts a narrative that touches upon grand themes of nature, technology, and humanity over the past two hundred years.

Murphy’s studio is filled with dress forms, dresses, bell-shaped skirts and women’s bodices made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In his work, women stand for humanity.

TODD MURPHY (1962-2020)