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.”

Bhabha Williams, a two-person exhibition of sculptures and works on paper by Huma Bhabha and paintings and drawings by Michael Williams, is on view at our Los Angeles gallery from January 21 through February 25, 2023. Williams has been the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at the Power Station, Dallas (2022); LOK, the Kunstzone in the Lokremise, Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, Switzerland (2021); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (with Tobias Pils, 2017); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2017); Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (2015); and Gallery Met, New York (2015). Recent group shows include .paint, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020); Joe Bradley, Oscar Tuazon, Michael Williams, Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2018); The Trick Brain, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2017); High Anxiety: New Acquisitions, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2016); Artists and Poets, Secession, Vienna (2015); and The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014). His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. Williams lives and works in Los Angeles.