On the one hand, Serge Murphy is a resolutely multidisciplinary artist, as firmly established (2) as he is restlessly dexterous, unclassifiable and yet almost universally recognized for over forty years, moreover a poet (like Guido), a generous teacher, and a versatile actor in the art milieu. On the other hand, Jean-François Lauda is a young abstract painter, unassuming but often considered to be one of the most promising of his generation, a noise musician in his spare time, decidedly self-taught (like Guido) but also a painter’s son, grandson and great-grandson.
When discussing the decades-long, unwavering continuity of his “cobbled-together inventions”, Murphy replies with a smile: “It’s as though I’ve only ever had one material idea in my ‘career’ for manifesting my relationship to art, for inscribing what touches me and what resembles me in its history, for speaking about time and sculpture…” I remember that at the opening for his most recent exhibition at the MMFA, the artist read an excerpt from a poem by Roland Giguère: “On a thin and fragile stage stands the sum of our constructions, all convoluted and lofty, finely chiseled lifelines, scaffolding for impossible tomorrows, castles of quicksand, etc.” It is well known that the old surrealist painter, indifferent to any trend or countertrend, had ploughed his own furrow for over half a century.
– Gilles Daigneault
Read the exhibition flyer below:
