The
work of LG WIlliams at Wirtz resembles painting, but it is mixed
media collage on canvas.
We
might never figure out by looking at them that Williams develops
his pictures from computer-processed found images. Being assemblages
of small printed sheets of paper and transparent plastic, his pieces
have a handmade look at odds with their graphic style.
|
|
The
closest artistic cousins to Williams' art may be the image-clogged
work of Sigmar Polke and the early black-and-white paintings of
Roy Lichenstein. Williams quotes Lichtenstein directly in
his "Study for ( ( Sshh!!" (1999).
Comic-strip
and advertising images, things scavenged from old textbooks and
mail-order catalogs and some details of his own invention colide
in Williams' pictures. They exude an air of social critique,
but it is hard to tell what Williams is against.
The
format he uses makes it seem that Williams wants to hold open a
space in which painting might resume in earnest once the trouble
is over. But his dreary implication is that the trouble is
history itself.
|