Bill Lowe Gallery is pleased to present Wink, the first posthumous exhibition of renowned artist Todd Murphy (1962 - 2020). This exhibition features sculpture, photography, painting, and mixed media from Todd Murphy’s Wink series (2010-2019). “Wink” is an affectionate nickname for James ‘Jimmy’ Winkfield, a champion jockey whose career began in 1898 at age sixteen. The son of former slaves, Jimmy quickly rose to fame and became a major success in horseracing after winning the Kentucky Derby consecutively in 1901 and 1902. Primarily due to segregation and shifts in the reputation of the sport, his career in the U.S. was short-lived and he moved to Europe for more promising opportunities. He was the last Black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby.

While the title of the series is affectionately devoted to Jimmy, the series taps into the forgotten legacy of various Black champion jockeys, including Isaac Murphy — the first jockey to be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, and Oliver Lewis — winner of the first Kentucky Derby in 1875. The series traces the arc of their finest moments as both an ode and memorialization of exemplary lives lived. Multiple paintings feature a stately, regal representation of a jockey atop an American Thoroughbred, set amongst a detailed landscape that — in line with one of Murphy’s primary influences — nods to 19th-century naturalism. Some may even argue that the heroism evoked in Wink (2017 - 2019) and George Stubbs (2012 - 2019) may be more likely to point towards realism. In these portraits, there is little attention placed on facial characteristics and it is difficult to distinguish the identity of each jockey; the primary distinctions are the different silks and matching caps. Perhaps this lack of detail to facial characteristics is to place these characters as emblematic of African American jockey culture, where players were forced out of a sport that they long championed.

Murphy does not present any of the jockeys without their horses. Perhaps they are inseparable and attached by default, and their identities dependent on this deep human-animal alliance. Indeed, at no point does Murphy disregard the greatness of the horse itself, and his fascination with its physiology is evident across various works in the series such as the photograms and sculptures on view. Between the horses and the jockeys, it is often difficult to recognize who Murphy truly views to be the stars of the derbies. This uncertainty comes as no surprise considering the artist’s lifelong fascination with the animal, a recurrent motif in his works since the earliest days of his career in the 1990s. The bell-shaped skirt, best remembered from the artist’s Murmurations series (2013-2019), once again makes an appearance. A horse’s foreleg bone is placed at its base; a stark reminder of the physical role of the co-champion, thus mitigating the Thoroughbred’s status from dispensable tool to chief accomplice. The use of animal bones is another motif in the artist’s oeuvre and archival research that solidifies a deep, and often macabre, curiosity for the natural world.

This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog featuring essays by Seph Rodney, adjunct faculty member at Parsons School of Design, USA and former senior editor of Hyperallergic and Peter Frank, art critic, curator, and poet known for curating shows at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in the 1970s and 1980s. He has worked curatorially for Documenta, the Venice Biennale, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and many other national and international venues.

TODD MURPHY

For more than three decades, Todd Murphy (1962-2020) has explored a practice that combines sculpture, painting, and photography. With the inquisitiveness of a 19th-century naturalist, Murphy has traveled to the far reaches of the world, collecting, photographing, and fastidiously cataloging everything from melting glaciers, to aviary species, to exotic fruit. His photographic studies of curiosities become sources for complex narratives based on philosophy, mythology, and the supernatural. In his work, Murphy often goes beyond these classical prototypes to include subtexts of bigotry, Southern history, and fantastic literary stories. In the end, his recurring protagonists — horses, birds, dresses, and boats — are poetic vehicles for a humanistic discourse.