MICHAEL WILLIAMS: MORNING ZOO
Michael Werner Gallery is pleased to present Morning Zoo, the first solo exhibition in London of works by Michael Williams.
Michael Williams's vibrant, large-scale paintings possess an uncommon emotional depth, by turns darkly comic and giddily psychedelic. His highly personalized formal vocabulary draws on automatism, found imagery and passages of abstraction. Rendered with an inventive combination of traditional and contemporary painterly techniques, Williams's paintings have a highly tactile, disorienting opticality.
Drawing is a constant practice for Williams and forms the foundation for his work in painting. The works on view at Michael Werner developed from a challenging and expanded approach to the drawing process. Williams began the new works by drawing on a tablet and editing these compositions in a computer. The resulting pictures are mechanically printed. Williams later embellishes the printed picture with paint, or he may not; the printed canvases can serve as starting points for painterly explorations or may remain as autonomous finished works. This process of digital drawing and printing brings Williams' chaotic imagery to the fore, questioning the role of material reality in painting.
Works by Michael Williams are included in the forthcoming exhibition The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, opening at New York's Museum of Modern Art December 14. Recent exhibitions include solo showings at CANADA, New York and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Comic Future, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and Imaginary Portraits: Prince Igor, Gallery Met at The Metropolitan Opera, New York. Williams currently lives and works in New York.
Michael Williams: Morning Zoo opens 20 November at Michael Werner Gallery in London and remains on view through 31 January 2015. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an interview between Michael Williams and Carroll Dunham. For more information, please contact the gallery at press@michaelwerner.com.