William Villalongo
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The men portrayed in the American artist’s new gut-punching collages and paintings are almost entirely composed of cuts. Sliced out of imported black velour paper, the swooshes, loops, and hearts are stark white; on painted wooden panels, they’re a mellower violet. With the addition of acrylic eyes, hands, and feet, these characters convey a dancerly élan—the figure in “Corner Office” flexes under a view of the Empire State Building, while the man in “Obertura de la Espora (Time Dancer)” wears a collaged necklace of African masks. However sprightly Villalongo’s works may appear, he is rendering trauma, and his men also convey something heavier. In “Free, Black and All American No. 3,” it’s the phrase “2.3 million incarcerated”; in the otherwise penumbral “Vanitas,” a silver tray holds rotting fruit and a photograph of the racist mass murderer Dylann Roof.
Through 9 December 2017
SUSAN INGLETT
522 W. 24th St., New York, N.Y.
212-647-9111