Billis Williams Gallery (formerly GBGLA) presents “Christopher Murphy: Tangle,” the gallery’s first solo exhibition of paintings by the Los Angeles-based artist. Murphy’s oil paintings are a meditation on life during the last several complicated years. The exhibition opened on January 7, 2023, and is on view through February 18, 2023.

Christopher Murphy’s paintings exist in a space between real and surreal. This new series is exquisitely painted figurative realism at first glance. At second glance, that reality splinters into questions about what is being depicted. Painted during the complicated last three years, these paintings are a visual representation of the lived experience of recent history. What appears at first glance to be groups of people, upon closer inspection reveals to be the same person repeated in different positions and at different angles. The paintings then become about an inner conversation – about the experience of being within a many-sided monologue.

GBGLA is now the Billis Williams Gallery. After establishing a successful contemporary gallery in New York in 1997, George Billis opened George Billis Gallery Los Angeles in 2004. Tressa Williams joined as director in 2009 and became partner in 2021. Billis Williams Gallery builds on the Billis legacy and shows emerging to mid-career artists with a special focus on Southern California painters. The gallery is dedicated to exhibiting exceptional work in richly varied visual vocabularies ranging from abstraction to photorealism.

On view: January 7 2023 – February 18, 2023

What: New Exhibitions
Where: Billis Williams Gallery LA, 2716 S La Cienega Blvd., LA, 90034
Website: http://www.billiswilliams.com