Michael Williams

Fructis

September 7 – October 20, 2018

Installation Views

Installation Views Thumbnails

Individual Works

Individual Works Thumbnails

Michael Williams
Violet Olga, 2015
oil and acrylic on canvas
100 x 72 x 1 1/8 inches
(254 x 182.9 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
Only Who Knows, 2018
oil on canvas
95 x 80 x 1 1/8 inches
(241.3 x 203.2 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
The 100 Million Year Itch, 2017
oil on canvas
96 x 77 x 1 3/4 inches
(243.8 x 195.6 x 4.4 cm)

Michael Williams
Plein Air Painting Under Fire, 2018
oil on canvas
80 x 98 x 1 1/8 inches
(203.2 x 248.9 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
Middle Game 2, 2017
oil on canvas
82 x 102 1/8 x 1 1/8 inches
(208.3 x 259.4 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
Non-Mirror, 2017
oil on canvas
106 x 85 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches
(269.2 x 217.8 x 3.2 cm)

Michael Williams
10 HBOS, 2018
enamel on linen
10 parts, each:
30 x 40 x 1 1/8 inches
(76.2 x 101.6 x 2.9 cm)
overall dimensions:
61 3/4 x 207 1/4 x 1 1/8 inches
(156.8 x 526.4 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
Mike, 2018
inkjet on canvas
111 x 68 x 1 1/8 inches
(281.9 x 172.7 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
Middle Game 1, 2018
inkjet on canvas
111 x 87 3/8 x 1 1/8 inches
(281.9 x 221.9 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
A Resounding Maybe, 2018
inkjet on canvas
120 1/2 x 101 x 1 1/4 inches
(306.1 x 256.5 x 3.2 cm)

Michael Williams
Green Inkjet Painting, 2018
inkjet on canvas
109 1/4 x 91 x 1 1/8 inches
(277.5 x 231.1 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
Christ, 2018
inkjet on canvas
119 3/4 x 72 7/8 x 1 1/8 inches
(304.2 x 185.1 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
Descendant Egg, 2018
inkjet on canvas
107 x 77 x 1 1/8 inches
(271.8 x 195.6 x 2.9 cm)

Michael Williams
Flies in Computer Lab, 2018
inkjet on canvas
121 x 98 1/2 x 1 1/8 inches
(307.3 x 250.2 x 2.9 cm)

Press Release

"In the truly long run stars burn out and cease to form (in a few trillion years), so that is the end of normal planet-life. We can likely make artificial heating lasting much longer but over time energy will become scarce. Living as software would give us an enormous future in this far, cold era but it is finite: eventually energy runs out. If not, we still have the problem that matter is likely unstable due to proton decay on timescales larger than 10^36 years--one day there is not going to be anything for humans to be made of. That is likely the upper limit."

- Anders Sandberg, Senior Research Fellow at The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University

David Kordansky Gallery is pleased to present Fructis, its first exhibition with American painter Michael Williams. The show opens on September 7 and remains on view through October 20, 2018. An opening reception will take place on Friday, September 7 from 6:00pm until 8:00pm.

Williams 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. Included in this exhibition are a number of paintings composed on 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.

Also in the exhibition is a group of Williams's recent Puzzle Paintings. Here he methodically disrupts his compositions using a complex analog distortion process. Forms are reinterpreted through a jigsaw-puzzle-like scrim. Legible information is pushed towards disinformation, stylized beyond comprehension. In the process Williams draws out an organic, flowing variant on the modernist grid and institutes in his pictures something like productive destabilization--a condition apparent throughout the works here.

Michael Williams (b. 1978, Doylestown, Pennsylvania) has had solo and two-person exhibitions at 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). Current and recent group exhibitions include Joe Bradley, Oscar Tuazon, Michael Williams, Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2018); The Trick Brain, Aïshti Foundation, Antelias, Lebanon (2017); High Anxiety, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2016); Artists and Poets, secession, Vienna (2015); The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014); and Comic Future, Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2013). At the moment Williams lives and works in Los Angeles.