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Gerald Williams, Gerald Williams: Kavi Gupta | 219 N. Elizabeth St. Chicago, IL, 60607

Past exhibition
9 September - 2 December 2017
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  • Works
  • Installation Views
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Overview
Gerald Williams Portrait Y, 1970 Acrylic on linen 24 x 18 in 61 x 45.7 cm
Gerald Williams
Portrait Y, 1970
Acrylic on linen
24 x 18 in
61 x 45.7 cm

Kavi Gupta is pleased present Gerald Williams, the first solo exhibition of the work of AFRICOBRA co-founder Gerald Williams in more than 20 years.

 

Chicago was the birthplace of one of the most distinctive and influential art movements of the 20th Century. AFRICOBRA emerged out of the inquisitions of a small group of black artists into the nature of how best to express the aesthetics of culture, time and place. In a series of landmark exhibitions ending in the late 1970s, these artists presented a dynamic, celebratory vision of transnational Africanism, which, as described in the 1969 AFRICOBRA Manifesto, encompassed “Definition: Images that deal with the past; Identification: images that relate to the present; and Direction: images that look to the future.”

 

Gerald Williams met fellow AFRICOBRA co-founders Jeff Donaldson (1932-2004) and Wadsworth Jarrell (b. 1929) in 1967. Williams worked with Donaldson at Northeastern Illinois University, and rented workspace next to Jarrell’s studio in the carriage house of a home on Chicago’s south side. The three began meeting with a few other artists for weekly get togethers to talk about aesthetics. Those casual gatherings became the genesis of the first transnational black art movement.

 

AfriCOBRA is now again coming sharply into view. Several of Williams’ iconic AfriCOBRA paintings were recently included in AFRICOBRA in Chicago, a multi-venue collaboration between The South Side Community Art Center, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts and The DuSable Museum of African American History, as well as in the monumental 2017 Tate Modern exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power. But AFRICOBRA is only the beginning of Gerald Williams’ story.

 

In the decades following the last, unified AFRICOBRA exhibition,  Williams traveled the globe working as an artist, a teacher, a Peace Corps volunteer, and an arts administrator for the United States Air Force. While studying, living and working in Kenya, Nigeria, South Korea, Japan, Italy, the Azores, as well as throughout the United States (Chicago, San Antonio, Tacoma, Sumpter and Washington D.C.) he has broadened his artistic practice, formulating a mature aesthetic position with universal resonance.

 

The confident vision Williams presents has grown out of a lifelong exploration of what he calls “mimesis at mid-point.” To mime does not mean to copy precisely, but rather to express the essence of something in a universally meaningful way. The mid-point to which Williams refers is a fluid arena of expression bridging the extremes of representation and abstraction, specificity and openness. His paintings, drawings, collages and constructions convey a vision of harmonies informed simultaneously by contemporary urban symbology, indigenous traditions, personal narrative, and global perspective. Williams’ work is polyrhythmic, layered, and multi-faceted; flowing between expressive, gestural freedom and meticulous control.

 

Taking a retrospective viewpoint, Gerald Williams at Kavi Gupta offers an unprecedented opportunity to examine the evolution of William’s diverse oeuvre. On view are many never before exhibited works, including watershed pieces from the AfriCOBRA period, as well as works reflective of the epiphany Williams had when first visiting Africa for Festac ’77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, plus multi-media pieces created throughout the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s during the artist’s time in Asia and Europe, along with select contemporary works.

 

Gerald Williams currently lives and works in the West Woodlawn neighborhood of south Chicago, where he grew up, and to which he returned in 2015. In addition to its recent inclusion in Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at the Tate Modern, his work has been included in numerous national and international exhibitions and is part of private and institutional collections, including the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Johnson Publishing Company (publishers of Ebony and Jet) and the Brooklyn Museum.

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Works
  • Gerald Williams Portrait Y, 1970 Acrylic on linen 24 x 18 in 61 x 45.7 cm
    Gerald Williams
    Portrait Y, 1970
    Acrylic on linen
    24 x 18 in
    61 x 45.7 cm
  • Gerald Williams Portrait Z, 1970 - 2007 Acrylic on linen 24 x 18 x 1 in 61 x 45.7 x 2.5 cm
    Gerald Williams
    Portrait Z, 1970 - 2007
    Acrylic on linen
    24 x 18 x 1 in
    61 x 45.7 x 2.5 cm
  • Gerald Williams Say It Loud, 1969 Acrylic on canvas 34 x 26 x 2 in 86.4 x 66 x 5.1 cm
    Gerald Williams
    Say It Loud, 1969
    Acrylic on canvas
    34 x 26 x 2 in
    86.4 x 66 x 5.1 cm
  • Gerald Williams Anonymity #1 , 2007 Acrylic on canvas 39 x 15 x 2 in 99.1 x 38.1 x 5.1 cm
    Gerald Williams
    Anonymity #1 , 2007
    Acrylic on canvas
    39 x 15 x 2 in
    99.1 x 38.1 x 5.1 cm
  • Gerald Williams Introspection #2, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 20 x 10 in 50.8 x 25.4 cm
    Gerald Williams
    Introspection #2, 2009
    Acrylic on canvas
    20 x 10 in
    50.8 x 25.4 cm
  • Gerald Williams, Looking Out On the Morning Rain , 2014
    Gerald Williams, Looking Out On the Morning Rain , 2014
  • Gerald Williams Melancholy , 2007 Acrylic on canvas 16 1/4 x 20 1/4 in 41.3 x 51.4 cm
    Gerald Williams
    Melancholy , 2007
    Acrylic on canvas
    16 1/4 x 20 1/4 in
    41.3 x 51.4 cm
  • Gerald Williams Abner & Alleane, 1975 Acrylic on canvas 34 x 31 x 1 in 86.4 x 78.7 x 2.5 cm
    Gerald Williams
    Abner & Alleane, 1975
    Acrylic on canvas
    34 x 31 x 1 in
    86.4 x 78.7 x 2.5 cm
  • Gerald Williams Fragmentary Apparitions #1 , 2010 Acrylic on canvas 22 x 18 x 1 in 55.9 x 45.7 x 2.5 cm
    Gerald Williams
    Fragmentary Apparitions #1 , 2010
    Acrylic on canvas
    22 x 18 x 1 in
    55.9 x 45.7 x 2.5 cm
  • Gerald Williams Fragmentary Apparitions #2, 2010 Acrylic on canvas 22 x 18 x 1 in 55.9 x 45.7 x 2.5 cm
    Gerald Williams
    Fragmentary Apparitions #2, 2010
    Acrylic on canvas
    22 x 18 x 1 in
    55.9 x 45.7 x 2.5 cm
Installation Views
  • 20170830 112122 1280X720
  • Gerald Williams Install2 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install5 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install3 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install4 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install14 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install7 300Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install8 300Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install6 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install11 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install12 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install10 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install9 72Dpi
  • Gerald Williams Install8 72Dpi
Press
  • Gerald Williams at his home/studio on Chicago’s South Side Photo Phillip Barcio

    FOR GERALD WILLIAMS, A CO-FOUNDER OF AFRICOBRA, TRANSNATIONAL BLACK AESTHETICS ARE AS RELEVANT AS EVER

    Phillip Barcio, HYPERALLERGIC, November 12, 2017
  • Gerald Williams, Wake Up, silkscreen (1970)

    GERALD WILLIAMS INTERVIEW

    Rebecca Zorach, Never The Same, November 1, 2011

Related artist

  • Gerald Williams

    Gerald Williams

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835 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago, IL 60607

Hours | Tue–Fri: 11 am–6 pm, Sat: 12 pm–5 pm

Kavi Gupta Elizabeth St

219 N. Elizabeth St. Chicago, IL 60607 
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