With splashed paint, stained can­vas, and scrawny braches, Nacho Murillo depicts a pri­vate world of his own, where min­i­mal is max­i­mal. In Unti­tled a skele­tal tree feeds out to the black and white outer por­tions of the piece, yet the blue which sits as a sky above remains untouched. As hints of blue emerge in the branches, the tree almost seems to be dis­guised as a river. It gets grayer as it reaches towards the bot­tom while the fallen red petals on the lower left cor­ner are more muted than their coun­ter­parts on the upper left. The tree/river ends in a pep­per yel­low that over­whelms the cloth beside. A trace of red mixes with the blue on a branch, unsure it wants to be a stream of water or a stream of blood. Whether it is a tree or a river, whether that trace of red is blood or water, does not really con­cern Murillo. His col­lage involves whim­si­cal move­ments and forms, flam­boy­ant col­ors, and bizarre com­bi­na­tion of media, such as his pre­vi­ous cof­fee cup series. Ret­i­cent as he is in per­son, Murillo has his work speak up and tell secrets of another world. *
Nacho Murillo is a Span­ish artist. Cather­ine Yu-Shan Hsieh is an asso­ciate edi­tor at NY Arts.