October 26, 2012

Artist Jeff Williams is an Atomic Sculptor

For Immediate Release

Press Release (PDF): http://www.spacesgallery.org/files/pr/2012/121026-spaces-williams-pr.pdf

Exhibition: November 16, 2012 – January 18, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, November 16, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Artist in town and available for interviews: November 11 – 16, 2012

Cleveland, OH, October 26, 2012—This November, Brooklyn/Austin-based artist Jeff Williams will present new sculptural works that utilize construction materials in a protoscientific probe of integrity. Steel, aluminum gallium, fire, salt and rust work with and against each other in objects that boast their strength, while simultaneously degrading over the course of the public project.

Williams' sculptural work brings together architecture, photography, and video to interrogate the relationships between object and image. Williams' work ceases to be seen as groupings of static materials, but rather objects that in process-vibrating at the atomic level, decaying, melting, oxidizing, shifting, crushing and being crushed.

Transformation is generated through activating the materials used in his sculptures with physical forces and chemical elements. Chemistry and physics oscillate between additive or subtractive processes, building upon or decomposing a given material. In addition, these reactive processes address the geographical and architectural history of the exhibition site, drawing attention to the elements that change and sculpt our built environment.

One of SPACES' massive wood columns that bisect the gallery will we sandwiched between two lengths of steel tubing which are then clamped to the point of bending the steel around the pillar. Williams questions the integrity of SPACES' architecture. Will visitors to the gallery become nervous at the literal tension in the materials? Will the tubing snap? With the pillar be crushed?

Another work features a standard aluminum I-beam with gallium deposits cast onto its surface. Gallium is known to weaken aluminum by deteriorating the aluminum's atomic bonds. Over the course of the exhibition, the I-beam will become more and more fragile-slowly losing its function as a useful architectural element, leaving it simply an in-process aesthetic object.

"This work has an entirely different depth to it once it is realized that it is constantly in flux," says SPACES executive director Christopher Lynn. "It causes us to look at our highways, our buildings, and other art in a very different light."

Williams says of his work, "I intend for the viewer to find new potential within their physical surroundings by subverting the obvious, in turn inviting curiosity and interaction."

ARTIST BIO

Jeff Williams was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and raised in Plymouth, Michigan. He studied at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and received his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design (1998) and his MFA from Syracuse University (2002). From 2006-2008 Williams was a fellow and artist-in-residence at the Core Program, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. In 2008, Williams was the recipient of the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Williams was awarded the 2012 Texas Prize by a panel comprised of Bill Arning, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; Gary Carrion-Murayari, New Museum, NYC; Philipp Kaiser, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, DE; Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Aspen Art Museum, CO; and Katrina Moorhead, artist.

Williams lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Austin, TX, where he is an assistant professor of sculpture at The University of Texas. Recent solo exhibitions include Artpace, San Antonio, TX (curator Russell Ferguson) and Recess, New York, NY in 2011; the American Academy in Rome, IT in 2009; and Project Row Houses, Houston, TX in 2008. Recent group exhibitions include Canada, New York, NY and Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY in 2012; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY (curator Natalie Campbell) and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston in 2011; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, IT in 2009; the Blaffer Museum, Houston, TX and the Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN in 2008; LAXART (LAXWINDOW), Los Angeles, CA (curator Aram Moshayedi) in 2007; and Bucket Rider, Chicago, IL in 2006. More: http://williamsjeff.blogspot.com/

R&D

The R&D (Research & Development) program invites artists, curators and other cultural producers to articulate their research and development of ideas and objects through a supported exhibition or project. These exhibitions and projects may be group, solo, or collaborative endeavors.