For Todd Williamson, serving as guest participant at Louise Bourgeois’ Saturday Artists Salons at her Chelsea gallery, an artist invitational to the American Academy in Rome, a visit to China as part of an artist team when Beijing opened a new arts district, and exhibiting solo during the 2019 Venice Biennale all served as important pathways in his artistic journey. These activities and a host of others culminate at the Georges Bergès Gallery in New York this fall, where the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award recipient will be featured with a solo exhibition entitled, “The Only Way Out is Through.”
Los Angeles-based Todd Williamson’s large scale, nuanced abstracts created especially for the show powerfully reflect the tremendous emotional and psychological challenges and transitions that have occurred during this last year and a half.
“The Only Way Out Is Through,” title borrows from Robert Frost’s prescient poem “Servant to Servant,” and presents with each work what Williamson describes as “deeply layered reflections” of the past, of ways we lived that “no longer have a place in this world.” Who are we now? How do we see our future? What has fundamentally changed?
While working during the pandemic, Williamson developed a unique application process for oil painting. By wiping, sanding, scraping, and dry-brushing, over and over again, until the level of opacity and subtle color variations is achieved, Williamson creates unique layers of dreamlike palettes onto the canvas.
“The Only Way Out Is Through” opens September 9th at Georges Berges Gallery (462 West Broadway, New York, New York 10012) and closes on October 3.
About the Artist
Todd Williamson is a past recipient of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Prize for Creativity, only one of three artists to ever receive this award. His solo exhibition “PROCESSIONAL,” an official collateral event of the 2019 Venice Biennale was named by several publications one of the Top Ten Exhibitions for 2019.
His work is included in numerous private and corporate collections around the world, most notably in the permanent collection of the Pio Monte della Misericordia where the piece hung next to Caravaggio’s “Seven Works of Mercy” for a period of time. Find more at: https://www.toddwilliamson.com/
By Chadd Scott
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