“River of Styx” by Peter Williams
@ Luis de Jesus, Los Angeles
until December 15th, 2018

Born in 1952 in Nyack, New York, Peter Williams lives and works in Wilmington, Delaware, and is Senior Professor in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Delaware.

This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

 

Taking its name from the Greek mythological goddess and the River Styx, the river that forms a border between the world of the living and Hades, the paintings weave together historical events, allegorical myths and creation stories with current events and Williams’ personal life experiences to address a range of subjects including oppressive social structures, white supremacy, police brutality, abuse of power, and political activism.

The technique and the palette of colors chosen oblige to see differently:

Created with oil-based enamel paint and pencil on canvas, Williams introduces a new painted dot technique that is a matrix of cultures and periods—from impressionist Pointillism, folk art, and digital pixilation to Afrofuturism, Australian Aboriginal dot painting, and traditional African body scarification. The readability of each painting is mitigated as the field of vibrant, colorful marks and amusing cartoonish forms are transformed into a spectral vision caught in an endless moment of becoming or dissolving—a past, present and future in limbo.