Michael Williams
dal 28/10/2010 al 26/11/2010
Segnalato da
28/10/2010
Michael Williams
Ltd Los Angeles, Los Angeles
The artist has created a suite of twelve paintings more abstract, setting up his painting production like a game by planning the image, implementing rules and demarcating the picture plane into subsections.
Ltd Los Angeles is pleased to announce Puzzle Paintings, the first Los Angeles solo
exhibition by painter Michael Williams.
For his Los Angeles debut, Michael Williams has created a suite of twelve paintings
that are a departure from his trademark New England surrealist pictorial style.
These works are more abstract, their methodology rooted in Williams’ habit of
playing solitary games. Williams sets up his painting production like a game by
planning the image, implementing rules and demarcating the picture plane into
subsections. Within this established framework, Williams’ process unspools by using
chance, failure and mistakes as a jumping point for improvisation, self-exploration
and creative freedom. As a result, there are often two or three pictorial options,
moods or genres offered within each work, and it is this collision of painted ideas,
devoid of any immediate “message” that makes this body of work so intriguing.
To prepare an image for painting, Williams begins by photocopying a drawing he likes
and cutting shapes out of the photocopy so that about half of the image remains and
half is taken away. He then pastes that onto a new piece of paper and redraws the
missing parts, not as they were before but as if seen through floating globs of oil,
distorting the shapes. This new drawing is then transferred to the canvas including
mistakes and signs of process. The lines and shapes become a framework for
expressive and investigatory painting.
“There is a sort of obsessive compulsion to this mode of working. Almost
procrastinatory. And it shares this trait with the compulsion of solitaire, playing
game after game until you win... But the objective of all of those time-sucking
solitaire games is dull and quantifiable, while the objective in these paintings is
not immediately known to me... and sometimes I think that if I can make better
paintings, that by proxy I'll become a better person.”
Michael Williams was born in 1978 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He earned his BFA
from Washington University in 2000. He has been featured internationally and recent
solo exhibitions include Uncle Big, CANADA (New York);Fried Paint, Galleri Christina
Wilson (Copenhagen); and If God Could Draw, The Green Gallery (Milwaukee). Williams
lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Artist Reception: Friday, October 29, 6-9 pm
Ltd Los Angeles
7561 w. sunset blvd, Los Angeles
Gallery hours: tuesday - saturday 10 - 5pm or by appointment
Free admission