Venice, CA – L.A. Louver is pleased to present an exhibition of Gwynn Murrill's maquettes, which marks the first time the artist has brought together a show exclusively comprised of her small-scale sculptures. Including over ninety works, the exhibition presents the full breadth of subject matter — deer, cats, dogs, bears, birds, tigers and cougars — for which Murrill is renowned. The exhibition also introduces a new series of entwined figures titled The Wrasslers. Murrill has created these maquettes over a 45-year period, and they incorporate a wide range of materials, including aluminum, bronze, ceramic, vermiculite and wood.
"Creating maquettes reminds me of the joy of playing as a child….the kind of freedom that affords. My maquettes embody the things that I aspire to." — Gwynn Murrill.
The maquette is a critical part of Murrill’s artistic process. Before developing a life-size sculpture, Murrill will first make a maquette in order to resolve issues of form, stance, proportion, surface detail and patina. In several instances, Murrill will not develop the maquette into a larger piece — for example,The Ape, 2007 and Acrobat Cat, 2009 — deciding instead that the sculpture should exist only in diminutive scale. As in her life-size sculptures, each maquette captures the posture, character and movement of the animal she conveys. The maquette's intimacy may also portend the grandeur of the life-size animal, such as Sitting Cheetah Maquette 2005, (its full-scale counterpart resides in the collection of the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California), or in the series Deer Maquette, 2005 (the larger versions may be seen in the City of Obihiro, Japan). The small scale also gives Murrill the freedom to experiment with form, color and material within the context of subject. The exhibition includes several examples of such diversity, such as the variety of colored Ceramic Binturong Columns, 2008, and the range of materials in Murrill’s series Elmo Maquette (Walking), 2001.
In addition to this extensive exhibition of maquettes, L.A. Louver presents Murrill’s latest life-size sculpture: Big Twisting Cheetah, 2009, bronze, 37 x 39 x 57 inches, which is one of the artist's largest bronze forms to date.
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