Artist: Kandis Williams
Exhibition title: the rivers of styxx
Venue: COOPER COLE, Toronto, Canada
Date: October 26 – December 8, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and COOPER COLE, Toronto
COOPER COLE is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Kandis Williams. This marks the artists first solo exhibition with the gallery.
In response to thinking about how anti-human propositions are re-produced intimately, covertly acting from a hybrid sub-non-conscious place on other systems of political representation; powerfully shaping our desire for togetherness and futurity. Crowd shots, classical beauty, Venus, sublimity, divinity as a mean of processing the natural world- mythology vs. philosophy- where violence and nationalism, violence and slavery are naturalized in the platonic revolution
Cindy
Naomi
Linda
Christy
Tatiana
Althea,
Tell me, what you know of
Truth and Beauty
Performance and Hierarchy
The Book of Justice
The Book of Virtues
A unified vision
A perfect oblivion
Reduplicate
Murderers of the Real
Collapse
Dilutes
Into metaphysical despair
At least
As shadows
Forever radiant
With your own fascination
Reduplicate
Show me perfection
Hold up Empire
Tell me
About progression
Descent and confusion
Between beauty and horror
A reversal of our natural order
(In my notes
the last line says:
Neoliberalism is Greco
In your notes
Thomas Paine once wrote:
What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude)
Reduplicate
What’s Real
Hidden and concealed
What is the essence of a judgment?
Unhidden Being
Holder of truth
Death is your affect
Doomed to forget
Unscrupulous deceit
Five hundred years of
Violence on repeat
Tell me, how you hold
catharsis in your mouth
dissonance on your tongue
Tell me, and
Let language and commerce guide you
Down
Lethe
Acheron
Cocytus
Phlegethon
Styx
All paths lead us here
The river of woe
Conceal me
Know me and you will know truth
The first lie
Naturalized
After glory
Comes decay
This is the essence of a judgment
To win the race, a prettier face
Rebuild the Republic
Meticulously
History, needs work
Re-worked
Anything but, worked out
Knowledge conceals
Our loss
Our past
Our sense of purpose
The history of the image remains unanswered
But in response
You said Bauhaus not Bacchus
The difference is more than u c
–Amy Fung
Kandis Williams (b. 1985, Baltimore, USA) received her B.F.A. in 2008 from the Cooper Union School of Art, New York. Her recent exhibitions include solo shows at Night Gallery, SADE, Los Angeles; 219 Madison, Brooklyn; St. Charles Projects, Baltimore, USA ; Works on Paper, Vienna, Austria; as well as a performance and workshop at Human Resources, Los Angeles. She was recently included in “A Woman’s Work,” a PopRally event at MoMA organized by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah. Her work has also been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Underground Museum, Los Angeles, USA; Neu West and 68 Projects, Berlin, Germany; and The Breeder, Athens, Greece, among other spaces. Williams has an active curatorial and writing practice, and runs Cassandra Press with artist Taylor Doran. Williams lives between Los Angeles and Berlin.
Kandis Williams, the rivers of styxx, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Kandis Williams, the rivers of styxx, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Kandis Williams, the rivers of styxx, 2018, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto
Kandis Williams, Acheron Death Mask II, 2018, Sticker on mirror glass, 48 x 48 in (121.9 x 121.9 cm)
Kandis Williams, Cave before Cocytus, 2018, Sticker on mirror glass, 24 x 24 in (61 x 61 cm)
Kandis Williams, Collapse, Turn ‘Round, 2018, Paper and collage, 10.3 x 10.5 in (26 x 26.7 cm)
Kandis Williams, Crowd on the marshes of Lethe, 2018, Sticker and plastic, 16 x 13.5 in (40.6 x 34.3 cm)
Kandis Williams, Her and love are the same, 2018, Paper, collage and plexiglass, 42.3 x 31.8 in (107.3 x 80.6 cm)
Kandis Williams, Iconic face of Death Mask II, 2018, Printed plastic and plexiglass, 30 x 55 in (76.2 x 139.7 cm)
Kandis Williams, Iconic, the Face of, Death Mask I, 2018, Paper, collage and plexiglass, 24 x 39 in (61 x 99.1 cm)
Kandis Williams, Landscape and RFD, 2018, Sticker, collage and plexiglass, 21 x 21 in (53.3 x 53.3 cm)
Kandis Williams, Rheme: Coffin and Crowds, 2018, Sticker on mirror glass, 24 x 30 in (61 x 76.2 cm)
Kandis Williams, Shallow pool of Bacchanal Freedom, 2018, Printed plastic and plexiglass, 32 x 48 in (81.3 x 121.9 cm)
Kandis Williams, Styxx, 2018, Sticker on mirror glass, 15.5 x 11.6 in (39.4 x 29.5 cm)
Kandis Williams, Styxx, 2018, Paper, collage and plexiglass, 7.8 x 6.5 in (19.7 x 16.5 cm)
Kandis Williams, The Bathers of Acheron, 2018, Sticker on mirror glass, 11.8 x 11.8 in (29.8 x 29.8 cm)
Kandis Williams, The Bathers of Acheron, 2018, Paper, collage and plexiglass, 10.5 x 8 in (26.7 x 20.3 cm)
Kandis Williams, The Mother the Son and the Holy Spirit, 2018, Printed plastic and plexiglass, 47 x 31.5 in (119.4 x 80 cm)
Kandis Williams, Venus of Lethe, 2018, Sticker and plexiglass, 36 x 24 in (91.4 x 61 cm)