Didier William: Pulse

About

Didier William portrays scenes that are at once highly abstracted and physical, spiritual and historical—merging techniques of painting and printmaking, including carving and chine-collé, to describe figures in swirling states of movement. Pulse presents William’s newest body of work, in which the figure moves between vast skies, mountainous ground, and the depths of the ocean, which—as bodies in themselves—shift through states of expansion and dissolution. These bodies are faceless and yet all-seeing, forming through a dense mesh of carved eyes and painted color over a highly patterned ground. Although these scenes mostly appear on a larger scale, works such as Soup joumou and Odalisque (both 2020) offer yet another “layer” to William’s project, in which the artist focuses in on a singular object that itself becomes a kind of void or portal into something of greater personal and cultural significance. Altogether, while William places emphasis on the body in imagined states of action and submergence, these figures tumble together and apart precisely through the series of unknown shadows and shimmers that surround them. A monograph on William's work published by the gallery is forthcoming, featuring new and expanded essays by writers including Erica Moiah James, Roman Kalinovski, Jerry Philogene, and Zoe Samudzi.