Attention-grabbing, funny and often pretty bleak too, Michael Williams’ paintings comment on the ridiculous nature of the contemporary world. The artist is showing now at Galerie Eva Presenhuber.
A true ‘post’ artist, Michael Williams uses a range of techniques and images, drawing on numerous methods of painting, airbrushing and mark-making. His latest show at Galerie Eva Presenhuber’s Maag Areal space brings together 11 paintings. ‘Fail’ is stamped solidly across an empty face in one piece. Is this internet speak, as in the oft exclaimed ‘epic fail’, or are we thinking about the deeper meanings of the word: test failure, failure in life? With all these connotations collapsed together, the word itself seems to lose some of its weight. It is, after all, one of the words we fear the most, yet here it is difficult to place.
The pastel emptiness of this work contrasts hugely with his more chockablock pieces, where half-recognisable shapes jostle for attention alongside others, appearing all to have sprung from a slightly different time and place, only brought together for the sake of these works; a slice of Op Art here, a soft fleshy mound there. Revered traditions are reduced to a mere slice of the action.
Of course, this is the modern world, and confusion rules.
Michael Williams is showing at Galerie Eva Presenhuber until 22 October
