Sue Williams: Project for the New American Century
David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Sue Williams. The artist has exhibited widely throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States with one-person exhibitions at the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2003); IVAM, Valencia, Spain (2003); Vienna Secession, Vienna, Austria (2002); Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, Florida (2002); and Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland (1997); among others. Her numerous group exhibitions recently include The Third Mind, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2007); Fast Forward: Collections for the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas (2007); Comic Abstraction: Image Breaking, Image Making, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007); Into Me/ Out of Me, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York (2006); and Still Points of the Turning World: SITE Santa Fe's Sixth International Biennial, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico (2006). This is the artist's debut solo exhibition at David Zwirner.
In this exhibition, Williams fully merges figurative representation and lyrical abstraction, two distinct styles that have defined her artistic production over the last two decades. The artist first garnered attention in the late 1980s with gritty, provocative canvases that combined figure and text to tackle issues of sexual objectification and abuse. Throughout the 1990s, Williams radically shifted her focus, thrusting formalist concerns and painterly technique to the forefront, allowing form and color to supersede explicit content. In recent years, the artist has embraced the new challenge of uniting these disparate approaches to again enable her canvases as clear vehicles of protest. The resulting works evoke Williams' early comic book influences with crisp outlines and blocks of brilliant colors. Against raw canvas and transparent acetate, her glaring palette, which includes forceful red, glowing orange, saccharine pink, and neon green, conveys a sense of immediacy, energetic movement, and the artist's signature wry humor.
For more information about available works contact inquiries@davidzwirner.com