Brittney Leeanne Williams at Alexander Berggruen

Artist: Brittney Leeanne Williams

Exhibition title: The Arch Is a Portal Is a Belly Is a Back

Venue: Alexander Berggruen, New York, US

Date: March 5 – April 14, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Alexander Berggruen, New York

Alexander Berggruen is pleased to present Brittney Leeanne Williams: The Arch Is a Portal Is a

Belly Is a Back. This exhibition will run by appointment only at the gallery: 1018 Madison Ave., Fl. 3, New York, NY, 10075.

The new paintings and works on paper by Brittney Leeanne Williams in this show take influence from desertscapes in Victorville, a city northeast of Los Angeles where Williams spent part of her childhood. Williams transforms these Southern Californian landscapes into “emotional landscapes: representations of psychological states, memories, and emotional ties.” In speaking about her omnipresent red figure’s folded posture, Williams noted:

She bends in tiredness, she bends under the weight of heavy grief; she bends in negotiation for the ones she loves; she bends in prayer; she bends to pick up her baby; she bends to anchor herself to the ground; she bends in pleasure; she bends in caretaking; she bends because her back is out and her knees are all that’s left with strength; she bends.

A Passing Dance(2020) maps an emotional landscape in presenting three figures folding, in unison, into one another, while mountain peaks in the background accentuate their forms. Williams envisions figures kneading out sound from their diaphragms in their folded and bent positions. In the artist’s words: “The diaphragm takes center stage. A strong bellow, a moan and a song emit from the depths. The belly is the center of the prophet. This prophet speaks.” Each peak and valley, formed by the mountains and by the figures’ legs, seems to resonate a beat. Their song captures a feeling that carries as the figures march along their path. In mimicking the grandeur of the mountains, the figures effortlessly capture nature’s power through song.

Inside a framed expressionistic ocean scene, the two figures in Naomi and Ruth-Temper My Grief, Cool My Tongue(2020) are locked in a tense embrace, floating above a rushing body of water. The ocean pours out of the work’s painted border, hinting at a fiery sunset beyond the shoreline. The red bodies twist into one another and blur into the sky as they extend beyond the margins of the image. As the biblical story of Naomi and Ruth symbolizes enduring devotion, the figures here become one.

In many of Williams’s works, borders cannot contain the figures’ forms; the bodies often seem boundless. When speaking about identity’s vast confines, curator and writer Legacy Russell wrote in her 2020 manifesto Glitch Feminism: “Unable to see its edges, we are forced to live within it as a world in and of itself. This is why, in order to reimagine the body, one must

reimagine space.” (1) In Williams’s The Swing of an Embrace(2021), a large figure looms overhead, weaving in and out of a painted frame. This frame is rendered in a green gradient that turns almost as black as the scene depicted in the doorway at its center. There, another smaller figure appears, echoing the larger, though more subtly bathed in a dim red light. While the smaller figure is contained in its doorway, the larger figure transcends boundaries.

The red of many of Williams’s figures might connote a rawness, a tenderness, and an emotional vulnerability. As Russell wrote: “A break, tear, rupture, or cut in skin opens a portal and a passageway. Here, too, is both a world and a wound.” (1) Williams’s female forms serve as conduits to viewing a dimension of Williams’s spirit. In her own words: “Her back becomes the keystone. She holds up what is above, fastening herself to what’s below, to make room so that something or someone may pass through.”

This exhibition marks Brittney Leeanne Williams’s first solo show with Alexander Berggruen, following her inclusion in the gallery’s group show Quarters(March 18-April 28, 2020).

Brittney Leeanne Williams (b. 1990, Pasadena, CA) is a Chicago-based artist, originally from Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami (Untitled Art Fair), London, Venice (Venice Biennale), Antwerp, Copenhagen, and Hong Kong, as well as in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. Williams attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008-2009). She is a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant recipient and a Luminarts Fellow. Williams’ artist residencies include Arts + Public Life (University of Chicago) and McColl Center for Art + Innovation, among others.

Brittney Leeanne Williams, The Arch Is a Portal Is a Belly Is a Back, 2021, exhibition view, Alexander Berggruen, New York

Brittney Leeanne Williams, At Odds 1 (Diptych), 2020, oil on canvas, overall: 62 x 110 in. (157.5 x 279.4 cm.), each: 62 x 55 in. (157.5 x 139.7 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, A Passing Dance, 2020, oil on canvas, 54 x 89 in. (137.2 x 226.1 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Naomi and Ruth-Temper My Grief, Cool My Tongue, 2020, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in. (152.4 x 121.9 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, The Swing of an Embrace, 2021, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Naomi and Ruth: Tension, 2021, oil on canvas, 40 x 27 1/2 in. (101.6 x 69.8 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Rain 1, 2021, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Sunset 2020, 2021, oil on canvas, 34 x 21 1/2 in. (86.4 x 54.6 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, A Sunset Sits Within, 2020, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Arch 21, 2020, oil and pastel on panel, 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Arch 8, 2020, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Arch 20, 2020, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Arch 14, 2020, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Arch 23, 2020, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Arch Within an Arch, 2021, gouache, watercolor, and pastel on paper, 16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Arch That Rains, 2021, acrylic and gouache on paper, 16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Golden Hour, 2021, acrylic, pastel, and gouache on paper, 16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm.)

Brittney Leeanne Williams, Bent Tree 1, 2021, acrylic and gouache on paper, 16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm.)