Michael Williams (b. 1978, Doylestown, Pennsylvania) negotiates the long history of painting by consistently questioning—and often undoing—its major components. Challenging himself with an ever-evolving set of formal problems, he produces images that reflect modern complexity and contradiction. Recent works have been made using a variety of different materials and tools, including oil paint, collage, and airbrushes; some have been composed on a computer using Photoshop and a digital drawing pad before being inkjet-printed onto canvas. In the execution of his images, Williams twists together a balance of offhanded gesture and careful compositional rigor, making decisions that keep his paintings willfully misoriented. As art historian Richard Shiff notes, “[Williams’s] art is infectious in causing others to ponder the importance—or not—of anything. It’s a start-all-over-again art for a start-all-over-again life.”

Michael Williams has had solo and two-person exhibitions at the Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut (2018); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (with Tobias Pils, 2017); Aïshti Foundation, Lebanon; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2017); Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2016); Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Canada (2015); Gallery Met, New York (2015); Secession, Vienna (2015); and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014). His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Carnegie Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Williams lives and works in Los Angeles.