Colorful explosions of “bad objects”: the eccentric constructions of two American artists generations apart

This volume brings together the paintings and drawings of Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007) and the work of New York–based sculptor Jessi Reaves (born 1986). Despite the generations that separate Murray and Reaves, this publication highlights each artist’s lyrical, playful and rigorous engagements with the decorative, domestic and bodily.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Wild Life explores Murray and Reaves’ often ambiguous conceptions of the body and the home, wherein both body and home are continuously coming together and falling apart.

This book features a newly commissioned conversation between Reaves and Johanna Fateman as well as a reprint of a historical interview between Murray and Kate Horsfield, which together chart the two artists’ irreverent plays with color and form, high and low cultural references, and notions of masculinity and femininity.

Visual artist(s): Jessi Reaves, Elizabeth Murray
Text by: Barbara Schroeder
Interviewer(s): Johanna Fateman, Kate Horsfield