ART CITIES:Zurich-Sue Williams

Embracing a type of realism influenced heavily by cartoons and comics, Sue Williams starts in the mid 80’s making paintings that referenced different forms of violence committed against women. A major theme of her was the interplay between the social and the sexual, particularly how the social inequities between men and women are played out in their sexual relations.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Eva Presenhuber Archive

In the beginning of the ‘90s Sue Williams begins to emphasize the more aesthetic and pictorial aspects of her work, her paintings become increasingly abstract, almost calligraphic in their looping, swirling lines. Over the years, Williams’ sometimes rawly applied figurative scenes changed into more casual and extended compositions that took over large-scale canvases – until they grew into almost or total abstractions, into interwined swirling compositions consisting of bodyparts, orifices, and betokened organs. Sue Williams in her solo exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich, presents two groups of works the artist created in two periods: Paintings on fabric taken from patternbooks from the late ‘90s, and large-scale paintings which the artist created recently. At first glance, the two groups of works look different, but the figurative scenes are showing up again. Fabric-patterns can be understood as an embodiment of a crusted, petty-bourgeois community, perpetuating structuresWilliams employs these fabric-patterns, still recognizable through their characteristic perforation, as a ground for her painting. The primer, reacting with the fabric, fringes at the rims and thus creates the impression of holes being ripped into the material. The figurative scenes, applied with the characteristic aggression from her earlier work. Williams’ new large-scale paintings show the latest development of her work. Compositions extended over large canvases combine the different techniques the artist developed during her career, clear lines bundling or building patterns, colour fields, fringing at the rims, and clear drawings which are neither figurative nor totally abstract.

Info: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Maag Areal, Zahnradstrasse 21, Zurich, Duration: 19/11/16-21/1/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, https://presenhuber.com