• Featured
  • Studio
    • Curatorial
  • Press & Publications
  • The Artist
Menu

William Villalongo

  • Featured
  • Studio
  • Field
    • Curatorial
  • Press & Publications
  • The Artist
VILLALONGO_Installation 1.jpg
VILLALONGO_Installation 2.jpg
VILLALONGO_Installation 3.jpg
VILLALONGO_Installation 1.jpg VILLALONGO_Installation 2.jpg VILLALONGO_Installation 3.jpg

SOLO SHOW: Mind, Body & Soul

September 1, 2016

10 September 2015 – 17 October 2015

Susan Inglett Gallery is pleased to present “Mind, Body & Soul,” an exhibition of recent work by gallery artist William Villalongo. A reception for the artist will be held Thursday evening, 10 September from 6 to 8 PM.

With “Mind, Body & Soul,” William Villalongo invites the viewer to return to his magical Otherworld of Nymphs and Sirens, offering us edgy, multifaceted vignettes framed and softened by floral and velvet flocked borders. The artist layers his canvas with figures and narratives that allow for multiple paths of entry. By engaging with the classic but historically problematic motif of the nymph or bather, he raises the question of who can represent idealized female beauty while reframing the absurdities and conventions of the male gaze. Villalongo’s many Muses perform acts from the banal to the extraordinary, at times undergoing anatomical transformations in bursts of color and light. A male audience watches, lurking among the velvety borders of the picture plane. The artist, in polarizing the concept of the visible and the invisible in his representations of female and male form, has constructed a visual metaphor that balances revelation and obscurity. This, along with the dismemberment and regeneration of the figure and reconfiguration of the narrative, has been essential to Villalongo’s revisionist retelling of the Art Historical canon as filtered through non-Western cultural influences.

Through narrative, Villalongo creates a picture in which figures—their interactions and gestures— bolstered by the physicality of the painting’s surface express the emotional and psychological where language often fails. The artist tells a story both familiar and fantastic woven with skewed perceptions and shaped by suggestive moments that tease the viewer into participating in a fiction that implicates reality within its idiosyncrasies. Willingly the viewer enters a surreal purgatory “Mind, Body & Soul,” trapped in the underbrush of Villalongo’s world.

The Gallery will publish a catalogue on the occasion of the exhibition with essay by LeRonn Brooks.

WILLIAM VILLALONGO was born in 1975 in Hollywood, FL. He received his B.F.A. from The Cooper Union School and his M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Villalongo has exhibited extensively with recent appearances in MoMA PS1’s “Greater New York,” the Seattle Art Museum’s “Disguise: Masks and Global African Art” traveling to the Brooklyn Museum and “Affinity Atlas” at the Tang Museum, NY. Work has also been in included in recent shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art; the National Academy, NYC; the Aspen Institute and the Studio Museum Harlem. Reviews have appeared in Artforum, ARTnews, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail and The Village Voice among others.

The exhibition will be on view at the gallery located at 522 West 24 Street Tuesday to Saturday 10 AM to 6 PM. For additional information please contact Susan Inglett Gallery at 212/647- 9111, fax 212/647-9333 or info@inglettgallery.com

← Black Pulp! & Woke Exhibitions a usfcamSOLO SHOW: Sista Ancesta →

LATEST PRESS:

Featured
ROME PRIZE FELLOW 2022
Mar 6, 2022
ROME PRIZE FELLOW 2022
Mar 6, 2022
Mar 6, 2022
In the N.B.A., the Court and the Canvas Are Increasingly Intertwined
Jun 15, 2018
In the N.B.A., the Court and the Canvas Are Increasingly Intertwined
Jun 15, 2018
Jun 15, 2018
The New Yorker "William Villalongo"
Jun 15, 2018
The New Yorker "William Villalongo"
Jun 15, 2018
Jun 15, 2018
Making Out the Black Body in Swirling Images
Jun 15, 2018
Making Out the Black Body in Swirling Images
Jun 15, 2018
Jun 15, 2018
USF's 'Black Pulp!' and 'Woke!' exhibits reframe African-American representation
Jul 6, 2017
USF's 'Black Pulp!' and 'Woke!' exhibits reframe African-American representation
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017
Which Artist Should Create Obama’s Official Presidential Portrait?
Jul 6, 2017
Which Artist Should Create Obama’s Official Presidential Portrait?
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017
The Push Back: Black Pulp! and Woke! at USF CAM
Jul 6, 2017
The Push Back: Black Pulp! and Woke! at USF CAM
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017
John Legend, Foo Fighters, Bjork On New '7-Inches for Planned Parenthood' Box Set
Apr 10, 2017
John Legend, Foo Fighters, Bjork On New '7-Inches for Planned Parenthood' Box Set
Apr 10, 2017
Apr 10, 2017
Brooklyn Artists Harness the Power of Bodies
Jan 4, 2017
Brooklyn Artists Harness the Power of Bodies
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017
16 Artists Who Made Sure Black Lives Mattered at Art Basel Miami Beach
Dec 16, 2016
16 Artists Who Made Sure Black Lives Mattered at Art Basel Miami Beach
Dec 16, 2016
Dec 16, 2016

For Inquiries:
SUSAN INGLETT GALLERY
522 West 24th Street New York NY 10011
212 647 9111
info@inglettgallery.com
 

web design by:
claire hung design