ART CITIES:Zurich-Michael Williams

Michael Williams, Exhibition View, Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber-Zurich, Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography-ZurichAfter studying sculpture at Washington University, Saint Louis (2000), Michael Williams turned to painting. His practice attracted attention in 2003, when he took part in a first group exhibition entitled “Barkley’s Barnyard Critters” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Since then, his output has continued to fascinate everyone interested in the renewal of painting.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Eva Presenhuber Archive

Michael Williams, who participated in the recent MoMA exhibition “The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World” (14/12/14-5/4/15), presents 11 new paintings in his familiar technique, in his solo exhibition at the Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich. Williams has an eclectic and energetic style that mixes airbrushed paint with inkjet prints (he’s been eliminating brushwork from his paintings since 2013). While his subjects and techniques are constantly shifting, his paintings usually result in a beautiful yet anxious hodgepodge of surrealistic patterns and imagery. In this group of paintings Williams brings together some of the various modes of painting he’s developed over the last 10 years to offer a darkly humorous view of the daily confusions and contradictions of contemporary life. In his most straightforward technical mode, Williams distills daily verbal/visual tropes into digital images that exploit the modernist concept of large scale painting. He does so by employing a monumental physical scale and a palette and texture that solidifies computer screen light and color. In other paintings Williams employs puzzle piece compositional techniques and graphic noise to bring together the physical stuff of the artist’s daily life, from highway signs to keyboards to calendars to self portraits. To read these paintings, along with their absurdly funny titles, is to encounter a personal language that communicates via a provocative tension between painterly distortion and instantly recognizable imagery. These are, in the broadest sense, political works, but ones that place the formal ahead of the political.

Info: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Maag Areal, Zahnradstrasse 21, Zurich, Duration: 2/9-23/10/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 10:00-17:00,  https://presenhuber.com

Michael Williams, 4, 2016, © the artist, Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber-Zurich
Michael Williams, 4, 2016, © the artist, Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber-Zurich

 

 

Michael Williams, 5, 2015, © the artist, Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber-Zurich
Michael Williams, 5, 2015, © the artist, Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber-Zurich

 

 

Michael Williams, This will be a vacation from that sort of thing..., 2015, © the artist, Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber-Zurich
Michael Williams, This will be a vacation from that sort of thing…, 2015, © the artist, Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber-Zurich

 

 

Michael Williams, Buddha Mutt, 2016, © the artist, Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber-Zurich
Michael Williams, Buddha Mutt, 2016, © the artist, Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber-Zurich