Shallima Maharaj has more on the highly-anticipated evening.ĮDMONTON - Peter Pocklington, the man who launched the Edmonton Oilers dynasty, then loathed for decades for trading Wayne Gretzky, welled up with tears Friday when he came home to a standing ovation. Watch above: Thousands of fans packed Rexall Place Friday night as the entire 1984 Stanley Cup-winning team reunited after 30 years. Send this page to someone via email email.The underlying message of Williams’ narratives speaks to our urgent need for change. He imbues these works with a social and political consciousness while offering subtle cultural critiques that are not undermined by painting style. While he is a skilled painter, Williams allows for a certain casualness in his depictions. Williams combines different styles ranging from illustrative to cartoony and making works that are amalgamations. While portions of each painting are realistically rendered, aspects of each canvas are also left unpainted or partially finished. Williams draws freely from myriad sources to create paintings that are packed from edge to edge with a range of compelling fragments. Figures akin to those painted by Picasso also make an appearance. There is a Guston-esque head in Mortal Ice , 2020 and flowers with faces that resemble those by Takashi Murakami in Romulus and Uncle Remus , 2019. Many of Williams’ paintings recall aspects of other artists’ styles. The fact that Williams includes the word Floater in the middle of the work as seen through the goggles may be both a commentary on age and a warning about the inaccuracies of vision. A floater is a dark shadowy spot in one’s vision. Words dot many of Williams’ images and in this work, they include FedEx, Oil, Capital, Bingo and Floater. Planets and stars can be seen in the sky as well as two newly arrived astronauts yet to be filled in with color. Cars criss-cross the densely packed composition where abstract shapes coalesce to form mountains and buildings. It is hard to discern if the view through the goggles is better or worse than what surrounds their rust colored frames. Traditionally, goggles are put on for protection and in the painting Goggles , 2019, Williams illustrates what is seen outside as well as through the lens. Where the astronauts are going, what happens to them when they arrive, as well as what becomes of what they left behind is alluded to in many of Williams’ more scenic paintings. Like in DNA, the astronauts’ space suits are more stylized than realistic or functional, but here their facial expressions are more dazed and confused. In these images, Williams does not paint in the astronaut’s gloved hands or booties but rather leaves them untouched to exaggerate the way the white canvas contrasts with the more colorful striated background behind. A limber astronaut dances to the music only he can discern in All that Jazz and passes by abstractly rendered planets, satellites and clouds, as well as through an ambiguous double helix in On the Way(both 2019). Their expressive faces exhibit both a sense of intensity and determination, perhaps an indicator of the unknown that awaits them in the new world. While their body positions and decorative space suits are reminiscent of Egyptian sarcophagi, these figures are very much alive. The astronauts who glide through deep blue space -represented as a background made up of short gestural brush strokes in DNA , 2020- are pictured from multiple angles drifting forward and back.
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