Lucas uses performances and interventions to engage the public in a dialogue concerning their notions of service, perception, liberation, and derivations of power. To do this he uses the way in which he earns his living as “research” to inform his artistic practice. First he finds employment in a particular area of interest and then constructs pieces that expose the imbedded metaphors inherent to its structure. This is done through an examination of certain things that we typically take for granted such as furniture, service people or locks.

Having completed bodies of work dealing with his “research” as a cabinet maker and as a bus-boy, Lucas has been working/researching as a Locksmith since 2003 and has been making the artwork that came as a result of this research since 2005. To do this he created The Locksmithing Institute. In different public settings he teaches anyone interested a specific locksmithing skill, such as: “How to Pick a Lock,” “How to Make a Key,” “How to Find Your Keys,” or “How to Lose Your Keys.”

At the same time that Lucas began working as a locksmith he also started practicing yoga. He wanted to compare the way we lock and guard our spaces to how we lock and guard our bodies. Lucas is a graduate of The Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco and has begun a new body of work/research dealing with teaching yoga and our perceptions of power.

Born in 1976, Lucas lives in San Francisco, is prone to napping and enjoys eating bakers chocolate with his brother Matt.

http://www.lucasmurgida.com

Reviews:

“Close Calls: 2007” at Headlands Center for the Arts, By Mark Van Proyen, Artweek, March 2007, Volume 38, Issue 2:

“…There were a lot of photographs in Close Calls 2007. But-how to put this elegantly? -most failed to distinguish themselves. The exceptions were stunning works by Nadim Roberto Sabella and Lucas Murgida… Murgida’s photos (Locksmith and The Locksmithing Institute of Lost Keys Nos. 1+4) were documentations of the artist “performing” (i.e. working) his day job as a locksmith, or as a teacher of locksmiths. While the depicted goings-on did seem laced with many allegorical portents of a surrealist provenance, the photos themselves had a composed stateliness rarely seen in most photographic documentation, and seemed to have knowing relationship to the ways that high-renaissance painters staged their own allegorical figures.”

Follow this link to see an article that appeared in the New York Times that highlighted my work: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/arts/design/18conf.html?_r=1

Also, follow this link to read an article that sights a recent piece I did in Portland, OR: http://pervegalit.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/badiou-and-performance-art/