Selected Press

Edging as an artistic force, New York City 2007.

Anat Litwin discusses the work of Laura Murlender

Over the last 20 years Murlender has devoted her artistic exploration to the investigation of the grid, and to the development of a unique emotional and structural tension. Her paintings build up via the superimposition of materials such as oil paint, industrial paint, found objects and photographs, and by the repetitive application of multiple layers. The juxtaposition of formalism and raw tactility in her work creates a unique hybrid, in which rational and irrational factors merge, and in which architectural and human presences intertwine.

The title with which Murlender has named this series Edging – communicates just that. Splitting the word Edging into two segments, one can find the architectural and human polarities hinted above: Edge (n) referring to a specific form, division, often alluding to geometrical structure (such as in “hard edge”); ing – depicting a verb in present tense, alluding to an activity which often refers to the human body in action. As a whole the word edging means binding. It points to Murlender’s rigorous attempt to mend contrary forces, and to trace a whole new sense of balance.

The Edging series contains a collection of 8 works on canvas, all sized 36" x 36". The classical square canvas format functions as an autonomous geometrical unit. Within the context of the Gallery installation, the canvas units function as building blocks - together they assemble a larger grid complex. This complex becomes a complete abstract environment that relates to various structural and architectural settings such as the private environment which can be seen through the element of the window - Red Square, the landscape referred to via the classical horizontal depiction -Horizon, and the architectural/urban setting which appears through the multiple divisions of grids and the use of industrial paint and photographs of deserted industrial spaces - Edging.

The consistency of the series becomes immediately apparent in the use of the grid as a central element in which the horizontal and vertical lines transcend the limits of the canvas, the color palette which includes dark blues, browns, grays and monochrome surfaces, and in the rhythmical repetition of layers throughout the series. This consistency stems from the fact that Murlender has worked on the series in her studio simultaneously, constructing the planes in the different canvases at the same time. This method of work emphasizes the fact that her artistic exploration takes place on a vast scale in which the whole is larger of the sum of its particulars. What we as the viewers actually see, are segments of a limitless structural matrix which is the core of Murlender’s work.

Murlender’s division of the canvas into grids and geometrical planes echoes Hard Edge Minimalism. This method of reducing the artwork to its essential structure amplifies the authority of the geometrical system over the organic chaos and emphasizes a fundamental man-made rational order. However, in opposition to the formal minimal genre of the 70’s, Murlender’s planes are charged with a tactile organic rawness, allowing the planes to breathe, erode and occasionally bleed into each other. In that sense the canvases communicate a vulnerable and sophisticated physiological sensibility, alluding to the memory of a lost space and lost time. This poetic sensibility resonates with the aesthetics of Arte Povera, in which the creative process is experienced as a laboratory situation in which a theoretical approach is rejected in favor of a complete openness towards raw materials and processes. Both Minimalism and Arte Povera are art movements that were at their peak in the 70’s while Murlender was an art student. The combined influences of both these movements in Murlender’s work create a contemporary spatial experience that is at once conceptual and expressive.

Murlender’s personal history of traveling is a forming factor in her work. She has lived, studied and created in numerous cities in the world including Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Paris, Mexico City and New York. The multicultural experience and the characteristics of the urban environment have become central to her practice. The vacant plans, monochrome color fields and industrial colors capture the sense of anonymity and displacement one can feel in the urban environment. It is not any one specific city that Murlender portrays, but rather an abstract representation of urban utopia.

It is interesting to note that despite the fact that the external urban settings have constantly changed around her, the structural complex Murlender has developed in the studio has become a solid and cohesive one. Over the years she has used specific architectural and formal representations in her work to the extent that they have become part of her own personal artistic vocabulary. It is as if Murlender has built an artistic language that is based on fragmented experiences of transition, yet these fragments have surprisingly become a rather grounding and defining value that prevails throughout the series. The space represented in the work can be everywhere and nowhere at all.

I find that the main riddle in the Edging series is in the force that holds the structural complexes together. It is as if the color fields and formal planes were held with a unique tension. A constant pull and tug is felt under the surface, yet the binding factor remains somewhat transparent as within a magnetic field. Murlender maintains a fragile balance that is under a constant threat of collapse. In her work the action of edging – binding contrary forms and challenging formal and emotional boundaries - becomes an artistic force. Possibly it is the only force which can allow the structural complex to exist and stay fully intact. I find that the viewer becomes a witness to a brave, beautiful and human act of edging in Murlender’s work.