Peter Williams
15 Feb - 23 Mar 2013
PETER WILLIAMS
15 February - 23 March 2013
For his first solo exhibition at Foxy Production, PETER WILLIAMS presents large figurative and smaller semi-abstract paintings. The larger paintings depict fanciful, fractured narratives that mix cultural and personal flashpoints with fields of patterning and textured color. The smaller paintings distill and intensify visual moments from the larger canvasses.
Some works take their figurative inspiration from social commentary and pivotal moments in the artist’s life, while others form innately and organically, as psychosomatic arrangements. His open-ended visual narratives combine a range of references: from lynchings, and the death of Trayvon Martin, to Velásquez, Colescott, Warhol, and Disney.
Williams’ paintings begin with a drawing that focuses first on shape and color. The artist manipulates light and hue to create depth and volume in seemingly flat spaces. After a light glaze is applied, brilliantly colored figures then begin to emerge. Contrasting with the fields of the background, they build Intense, humorous, and disturbing relationships among one another.
Idyllic fantasies, nightmares, comedy, and sexual desire, all hold sway in William’s visions of clashing forces. Some figures and patterns appear in a number of paintings, like the characters and backdrops of a comic-strip. His smaller semi-abstract paintings have borders within borders that lead to orifice-like centers. Their patterning has a fluidity that gives them a sense of transition, like portals opening to other dimensions.
Peter Williams (Nyack, NY, 1952) first exhibited at the Woodstock Music Festival Exhibition in Bethel, NY, in 1969. He lives and works in Wilmington, DE, and holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Selected exhibitions include: Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, MI; Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE (solo); Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI (all 2007); Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco, CA (2006); Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, TX (2004); Whitney Museum of American Art (2002); and Museo Afro-Brasilero, Bahia de Salvador, Brazil (2001).
15 February - 23 March 2013
For his first solo exhibition at Foxy Production, PETER WILLIAMS presents large figurative and smaller semi-abstract paintings. The larger paintings depict fanciful, fractured narratives that mix cultural and personal flashpoints with fields of patterning and textured color. The smaller paintings distill and intensify visual moments from the larger canvasses.
Some works take their figurative inspiration from social commentary and pivotal moments in the artist’s life, while others form innately and organically, as psychosomatic arrangements. His open-ended visual narratives combine a range of references: from lynchings, and the death of Trayvon Martin, to Velásquez, Colescott, Warhol, and Disney.
Williams’ paintings begin with a drawing that focuses first on shape and color. The artist manipulates light and hue to create depth and volume in seemingly flat spaces. After a light glaze is applied, brilliantly colored figures then begin to emerge. Contrasting with the fields of the background, they build Intense, humorous, and disturbing relationships among one another.
Idyllic fantasies, nightmares, comedy, and sexual desire, all hold sway in William’s visions of clashing forces. Some figures and patterns appear in a number of paintings, like the characters and backdrops of a comic-strip. His smaller semi-abstract paintings have borders within borders that lead to orifice-like centers. Their patterning has a fluidity that gives them a sense of transition, like portals opening to other dimensions.
Peter Williams (Nyack, NY, 1952) first exhibited at the Woodstock Music Festival Exhibition in Bethel, NY, in 1969. He lives and works in Wilmington, DE, and holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Selected exhibitions include: Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, MI; Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE (solo); Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI (all 2007); Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco, CA (2006); Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, TX (2004); Whitney Museum of American Art (2002); and Museo Afro-Brasilero, Bahia de Salvador, Brazil (2001).