Michael Williams
Gladstone Gallery
New York | 24th Street
Michael Williams is one of the most remarkable new generation painters who swiftly blends analog and digital practices to orchestra complex semi-abstract and somewhat figurative forms. The Los Angeles-based artist, whose career took off at CANADA of the Lower East Side, moves to Chelsea with his first exhibition at Gladstone Gallery. Energetic and colorful gestures stem from his experimentation with digital print and oil paint.
Mixing the two seemingly opposite approaches on the canvas, Williams builds a phantasmagorical universe in which slightly familiar objects—computer keyboard or floor tiles appear alongside smears of paint and geometric forms—are embedded in a digital composition. Created either on computer or by hand, Williams’s vibrant colors and amalgamated shapes construct a joyful and rich composition.
“Even where there seems to be no attempt to create a unified image, Williams’s paintings somehow cohere. The painter performs a risky high-wire act, but ultimately he succeeds. One can imagine finding something new, and pleasantly surprising, in these recent works every day,” notes Jeff Frederick on Art in America about Williams’s loose and exuberant painting technique.
The exhibition is on view until May 6, 2017