David Musgrave
David Musgrave’s practice is an exploration of the uncertainties of representation, expression and process. The anthropomorphic forms that structure his work are at once figures and abstractions; a carefully nuanced interrelationship of image and material result in a play between the actual and the fictional, identification, and estrangement. His sculptural works frequently involve depictions of common materials, such as scraps of paper rendered in painted aluminum sheet, which are modified and transformed by making their methods of construction explicit. His drawings can resemble documents of artifacts that hint at the primitive or the paranormal, although the exact nature of these non-existent objects remains unfixed. Other drawings replicate scored and damaged surfaces, close viewing of which reveals a highly detailed evocation of fictive but perfectly plausible surfaces created with graphite. Elusive imagery combines with the artist’s technical precision to imbue the work with complex tensions, testing our notions of perception and the real.
Musgrave has exhibited extensively, including solo exhibitions at greengrassi in London and Marc Foxx in Los Angeles. His work has been included in various group exhibitions at institutions throughout Europe and the Americas, including Kunstverein Freiburg, Tate in London, CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, and Contemporary Art …
David Musgrave’s practice is an exploration of the uncertainties of representation, expression and process. The anthropomorphic forms that structure his work are at once figures and abstractions; a carefully nuanced interrelationship of image and material result in a play between the actual and the fictional, identification, and estrangement. His sculptural works frequently involve depictions of common materials, such as scraps of paper rendered in painted aluminum sheet, which are modified and transformed by making their methods of construction explicit. His drawings can resemble documents of artifacts that hint at the primitive or the paranormal, although the exact nature of these non-existent objects remains unfixed. Other drawings replicate scored and damaged surfaces, close viewing of which reveals a highly detailed evocation of fictive but perfectly plausible surfaces created with graphite. Elusive imagery combines with the artist’s technical precision to imbue the work with complex tensions, testing our notions of perception and the real.
Musgrave has exhibited extensively, including solo exhibitions at greengrassi in London and Marc Foxx in Los Angeles. His work has been included in various group exhibitions at institutions throughout Europe and the Americas, including Kunstverein Freiburg, Tate in London, CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
Courtesy of Luhring Augustine