artistsketchbooks.com

A new resource for artist's books: artistsketchbooks.com/KentWilliams

EKLEKTIKOS Review

Blond Natalia in Studio Arrangement
2010, oil on linen, 44×48 in., 112×122 cm.

 Whether or not they actively subsume sexuality under the weight of calculated conceptual concerns, the formats of many media favored by contemporary artists tend towards disrupting acts of voyeurism. British artist Sarah Lucas’s jury-rigged assemblages investigate its seedy socio-economic complexities. A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner’s collaborative, performance-driven videos reformulate the paradigms of its mediation to emphasize its role in community formation. Defused by the enforced deadpan of their documentary sensibilities, it never rises to the glossy surfaces of Mona Kuhn’s at once bared and barren photographs.

By contrast, Kent Williams’ current paintings and drawings derive much of their potency from exemplifying figurative painting’s alluring tactility and coincidental ties to the long history of eroticized representation. Though tempered by comparison, the artist’s stylistic extravagance – manifest in expressionistically smeared, splattered, and abraded paint handling – calls to mind Cecily Brown’s fluent foregrounding of oil’s in-the-flesh immediacy and the cunning ease with which obfuscatory gestures can suggest sexual frisson.

Perhaps the show’s cynosure, “Blonde Natalia in Studio Arrangement”revels in the risqué, if also knowingly retardataire, associations of studio practice. Rendered in a flurry of writhing strokes of oil on linen, its physically idealized (i.e., sexually objectified) male and female models writhe in independent ecstasies against a backdrop of paint cans and orange extension cables – the latter an explicit reminder of the erotic currents snaking through the composition’s literal and figurative middle ground. Indulgent, irresponsible, and wickedly immediate, the painting – suitably representative of the majority of works on view – largely ignores the continuing crisis of representation. Williams’ willful indifference to such intellectual conceits serves to make it sexier.

Alex Ross, Visual Art Source, Oct 2010, Kent Williams at Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Pre-Opening Install Shots

Here are a few installation shots pre-opening. Will post more of exhibition and of opening later. See preview of exhibition online at kentwilliams.com

KENT WILLIAMS: EKLEKTIKOS
A Solo Exhibition of New Paintings and Drawings
September 2 – 30, 2010 | Opening reception Thursday, September 2, 6 – 8 pm

EVOKE Contemporary
130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite F
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
505.995.9902

Email: info@evokecontemporary.com

Next Stop, Santa Fe

Studio Arrangement in Blue and Rose 
2010, oil on linen, 54 x 50 in., 137 x 127 cm.

See preview of exhibition online at kentwilliams.com

KENT WILLIAMS: EKLEKTIKOS
A Solo Exhibition of New Paintings and Drawings
September 2 – 30, 2010 | Opening reception Thursday, September 2, 6 – 8 pm

EVOKE Contemporary
130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite F
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
505.995.9902

Email: info@evokecontemporary.com

KENT WILLIAMS: EKLEKTIKOS

Ukiyo, 2010, oil on linen, 54 x 50 in., 137 x 127 cm.

KENT WILLIAMS: EKLEKTIKOS
A Solo Exhibition of New Paintings and Drawings
September 2 – 30, 2010 | Opening reception Thursday, September 2, 6 – 8 pm

EVOKE Contemporary
130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite F
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
505.995.9902

Email: info@evokecontemporary.com

THE SILK BOOK

Kent Williams: The Silk Book is an over-sized 17 x 17 inch handcrafted artist edition which includes 20 giclée plates, and one original drawing executed especially for each volume. The drawing and the plates are hand-bound in each beautifully crafted book by means of Japanese stab binding, and features mulberry endpapers and covered by Japanese silk and debossed. Each volume is individually proofed by the artist and comes signed, numbered and stamped with the artist's personal hanko signature seal and embossed stamp. Very limited to an edition of 10. $2500 SOLD OUT

The book can also be ordered directly from the Kent Williams Studio Store, but it's very important that you contact us first for availability of the edition(s) you may be interested in.

Below are images of the book and the 10 original drawings.

  ^ Silk Book Drawing 10/10

^ Silk Book Drawing 9/10

^ Silk Book Drawing 8/10

^ Silk Book Drawing 7/10

^ Silk Book Drawing 6/10

^ Silk Book Drawing 5/10

^ Silk Book Drawing 4/10

^ Silk Book Drawing 3/10

^ Silk Book Drawing 2/10

^ Silk Book Drawing 1/10