EXHIBITIONS
Peter Williams: Black Universe is a joint exhibition that surveys Williams’ figurative and abstract paintings. Intertwining art historical references, allegories, and current events with personal life experiences, his paintings address significant issues of our time, such as climate change and racial discrimination, through grotesque figures, vibrant compositions, and symbolic imagery. Peter Williams: Black Universe is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and curated by guest curators Larry Ossei-Mensah and Rebecca Mazzei.
EXHIBITIONS
PETER WILLIAMS: BLACK UNIVERSE
JULY 2, 2020 – JANUARY 10, 2021
Peter Williams: Black Universe is a joint exhibition that presents Williams’ figurative and abstract paintings. Williams’ visually compelling works intertwine art historical references, allegories, current events, and personal life experiences. In this two-part exhibition, which presents more than two dozen paintings, the artist addresses difficult social issues, such as racial discrimination and climate change, through symbolic imagery, grotesque figures, and vibrant compositions. Now a professor of painting at the University of Delaware, Williams taught for 17 years at Wayne State University in Detroit and was a well-established member of the arts community.
Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in collaboration with guest curators Larry Ossei-Mensah and Rebecca Mazzei, the exhibition highlights new figurative works from Williams’ Black Exodus series (on view at MOCAD) and Narration and Transition, a survey of abstract paintings (on view at Trinosophes) that are an essential aspect of his dynamic oeuvre. Williams presents an uncensored picture of dominant contemporary culture, one in which our desires, our humor, our complicity and brutality are unsuppressed.
MOCAD presents a selection of 10 paintings from the Black Exodus series, featuring a highly evolved Afrofuturist storyline that uses allegory, dark humor, and satire to explore a new ecologically focused life for Black people. The series examines the idea of “space” literally and metaphorically, referring to the surface of the canvas, the physical realm, and perhaps most importantly, the realm of inner and outer consciousness.
With the earth on the verge of social and environmental disaster, a community bands together as they embark on an interdimensional voyage. Individuals travel in retrofitted 1950s flying cars, referencing the ingenuity of Cuban society during Socialism and Williams’ time spent living in the Motor City.
The formal qualities of painting function purposefully in the artist’s work as he slips between abstraction and figuration. Williams' stimulating color palette lures viewers in to explore themes regarding racial animosity that they may otherwise find challenging to confront. He also uses pattern and distortion as devices to “scramble things up,” emphasizing the disruptive and disorienting conditions that affect Black lives in American society. His characters may grab the viewer’s attention at first, but nothing can be taken at face value. A network of activity resides in the layers beneath the surface.
This charged body of work showcases the artist’s incredible knack for storytelling, as well as an in-depth knowledge of art history and the history of civilization that seem to be at his fingertips. He invites viewers to use their imagination when exploring a narrative he has constructed.
These paintings often convey multiple perceptual experiences at once, evoking potent imagery of both a physiological and psychological nature—totemic forms suggestive of sexuality and desire, ancient cultural significance, or even his own experience living in his body. Williams experienced great trauma as a young man, when he was involved in a car accident that left him disabled. Flesh, muscle, blood vessels, and cellular activity come to mind in the visceral forms he repetitively makes. These elements also become solutions for figuration, laying the groundwork for props that emerge in his narrative paintings, where they take on new meaning while carrying the 'DNA' of their origin.
Peter Williams: Black Universe is co-curated by guest curators Larry Ossei-Mensah and Rebecca Mazzei and organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. On view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Trinosophes (1464 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit).
Funding for Peter Williams: Black Universe is provided Modern Ancient Brown and with additional support from Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
As the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit continues to monitor the Covid-19 pandemic and develop a reopening plan, the exhibition opening date of Peter Williams: Black Universe is subject to change.
Peter Williams, The Sudanese Market, 2019, Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 in. Courtesy of the artist and the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio.
Peter Williams, Black People's Oil, Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 in. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus, Los Angeles, California.
Peter Williams, Rockettry, Oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in. Courtesy of the collection of Jorge M. Perez, Miami, Florida.
Peter Williams, Time Out, Another Dimension, Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus, Los Angeles, California.
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Website: Peter Williams
"There Is Nothing United About the United States or the Art World" Hyperalergic, February 29, 2020
PRESS + MEDIA
Peter Williams Black Universe, Opening April 3, 2020
Related Events
Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is the first solo museum show for Detroit-based visual artist, Conrad Egyir. The works in this show focus on figurative characters that reside or bestride three geographical spaces–Detroit, New York, and Aburi, Ghana–and how the cultures of each of these locations define citizenship, migration, hybrid spaces, and political and religious revolutions. Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in partnership with International Studio & Curatorial Program.
EXHIBITIONS
CONRAD EGYIR: TERRA NULLIUS
JULY 2, 2020 – JANUARY 10, 2021
Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is the first solo museum show for Detroit-based visual artist, Conrad Egyir. For this debut, Egyir created a new body of work while in residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City, during the summer of 2019. The works in this show focus on figurative characters that reside or bestride three geographical spaces–Detroit, New York, and Aburi, Ghana–and how the cultures of each of these locations define citizenship, migration, hybrid spaces, and political and religious revolutions. At the core of the exhibition, is finding similarities among the three psycho-social terrains and synthesizing them into a new space “Terra Nullius.” Within this new place, devoid of political and legal constructs, its residents behave as stewards of time, resources, and space.
Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in partnership with International Studio & Curatorial Program. Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is coordinated by Tizziana Baldenebro, Ford Curatorial Fellow with curatorial insights from guest curator Larry Ossei-Mensah.
Exhibitions and public programs at MOCAD are supported by the A. Alfred Taubman Foundation. Lead funding for this exhibition is generously provided by The Kettering Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Jessica Silverman Gallery.
As the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit continues to monitor the Covid-19 pandemic and develop a reopening plan, the exhibition opening date of Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is subject to change.
Conrad Egyir, Ibtisam, 2020, Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.
Conrad Egyir, On Code, 2020, Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
PRESS + MEDIA
Press Release Spring 2020 Exhibitions
Related EVENTS
Crimes Against Reality is the first solo museum exhibition of the New Red Order. In this exhibition, the NRO explores the desire for indigeneity through the lens of digital culture, experimental media, and emerging technology. Crimes Against Reality is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
EXHIBITIONS
NEW RED ORDER: CRIMES AGAINST REALITY
JULY 9, 2020 – JANUARY 10, 2021
New Red Order: Crimes Against Reality explores the desire for indigeneity through the lens of digital culture, experimental media, and emerging technology. Presented across two galleries at MOCAD, Crimes Against Reality includes new video commissions shot on-location in Detroit and Southeast Michigan.
New Red Order (NRO) is a public secret society facilitated by core contributors Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys. Working with an interdisciplinary network of informants—including Ashley Byler, Driftnote, Jim Fletcher, Inpatient Press, KITE, Maiingan "iNDiO1763" Wiikwedong, Kyleigh M. Mathewson, Tony Oursler, Laura Ortman, Jeremy Pheiffer, Gaile Pranckunaite, Walter Scott, Rezarta Seferi, Bayley Sweitzer, Walker Tate, Virgil Taylor, Kate Valk, and others—the NRO co-produces video, performance, and installation works that confront settler colonial tendencies and obstacles to Indigenous growth and agency.
Crimes Against Reality is the largest installment to date in Unboxing, an ongoing series of exhibitions, performances, and public programs dedicated to emerging ideas at the crossroads of technology, new media, and contemporary art. Unboxing is a spotlight for new perspectives on digital culture in the museum context. The series provides MOCAD with a dedicated platform for engaging topics unique to art of the twenty-first century.
New Red Order: Crimes Against Reality is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and curated by Pat Elifritz, Curator of New Media and Technology, with curatorial support from Tizziana Baldenebro, Ford Curatorial Fellow.
Exhibitions and public programs at MOCAD are supported by the A. Alfred Taubman Foundation. New Red Order: Crimes Against Reality is generously supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
New Red Order, CULTURE CAPTURE: TERMINAL ADDDITION, HD video, 2019, Photo: Courtesy of the artists
New Red Order, CULTURE CAPTURE: TERMINAL ADDDITION, HD video, 2019, Photo: Courtesy of the artists
New Red Order, The Violence of Civilization Without Secrets, HD video, 2017, Photo: Courtesy of the artists
New Red Order, production still, 2019, Photo: Courtesy of the artists
Peter Williams: Black Universe is a joint exhibition that surveys Williams’ figurative and abstract paintings. Intertwining art historical references, allegories, and current events with personal life experiences, his paintings address significant issues of our time, such as climate change and racial discrimination, through grotesque figures, vibrant compositions, and symbolic imagery. Peter Williams: Black Universe is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and curated by guest curators Larry Ossei-Mensah and Rebecca Mazzei.
EXHIBITIONS
PETER WILLIAMS: BLACK UNIVERSE
JULY 2, 2020 – JANUARY 10, 2021
Peter Williams: Black Universe is a joint exhibition that presents Williams’ figurative and abstract paintings. Williams’ visually compelling works intertwine art historical references, allegories, current events, and personal life experiences. In this two-part exhibition, which presents more than two dozen paintings, the artist addresses difficult social issues, such as racial discrimination and climate change, through symbolic imagery, grotesque figures, and vibrant compositions. Now a professor of painting at the University of Delaware, Williams taught for 17 years at Wayne State University in Detroit and was a well-established member of the arts community.
Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in collaboration with guest curators Larry Ossei-Mensah and Rebecca Mazzei, the exhibition highlights new figurative works from Williams’ Black Exodus series (on view at MOCAD) and Narration and Transition, a survey of abstract paintings (on view at Trinosophes) that are an essential aspect of his dynamic oeuvre. Williams presents an uncensored picture of dominant contemporary culture, one in which our desires, our humor, our complicity and brutality are unsuppressed.
MOCAD presents a selection of 10 paintings from the Black Exodus series, featuring a highly evolved Afrofuturist storyline that uses allegory, dark humor, and satire to explore a new ecologically focused life for Black people. The series examines the idea of “space” literally and metaphorically, referring to the surface of the canvas, the physical realm, and perhaps most importantly, the realm of inner and outer consciousness.
With the earth on the verge of social and environmental disaster, a community bands together as they embark on an interdimensional voyage. Individuals travel in retrofitted 1950s flying cars, referencing the ingenuity of Cuban society during Socialism and Williams’ time spent living in the Motor City.
The formal qualities of painting function purposefully in the artist’s work as he slips between abstraction and figuration. Williams' stimulating color palette lures viewers in to explore themes regarding racial animosity that they may otherwise find challenging to confront. He also uses pattern and distortion as devices to “scramble things up,” emphasizing the disruptive and disorienting conditions that affect Black lives in American society. His characters may grab the viewer’s attention at first, but nothing can be taken at face value. A network of activity resides in the layers beneath the surface.
This charged body of work showcases the artist’s incredible knack for storytelling, as well as an in-depth knowledge of art history and the history of civilization that seem to be at his fingertips. He invites viewers to use their imagination when exploring a narrative he has constructed.
These paintings often convey multiple perceptual experiences at once, evoking potent imagery of both a physiological and psychological nature—totemic forms suggestive of sexuality and desire, ancient cultural significance, or even his own experience living in his body. Williams experienced great trauma as a young man, when he was involved in a car accident that left him disabled. Flesh, muscle, blood vessels, and cellular activity come to mind in the visceral forms he repetitively makes. These elements also become solutions for figuration, laying the groundwork for props that emerge in his narrative paintings, where they take on new meaning while carrying the 'DNA' of their origin.
Peter Williams: Black Universe is co-curated by guest curators Larry Ossei-Mensah and Rebecca Mazzei and organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. On view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Trinosophes (1464 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit).
Funding for Peter Williams: Black Universe is provided Modern Ancient Brown and with additional support from Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
As the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit continues to monitor the Covid-19 pandemic and develop a reopening plan, the exhibition opening date of Peter Williams: Black Universe is subject to change.
Peter Williams, The Sudanese Market, 2019, Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 in. Courtesy of the artist and the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio.
Peter Williams, Black People's Oil, Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 in. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus, Los Angeles, California.
Peter Williams, Rockettry, Oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in. Courtesy of the collection of Jorge M. Perez, Miami, Florida.
Peter Williams, Time Out, Another Dimension, Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus, Los Angeles, California.
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Website: Peter Williams
"There Is Nothing United About the United States or the Art World" Hyperalergic, February 29, 2020
PRESS + MEDIA
Peter Williams Black Universe, Opening April 3, 2020
Related Events
Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is the first solo museum show for Detroit-based visual artist, Conrad Egyir. The works in this show focus on figurative characters that reside or bestride three geographical spaces–Detroit, New York, and Aburi, Ghana–and how the cultures of each of these locations define citizenship, migration, hybrid spaces, and political and religious revolutions. Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in partnership with International Studio & Curatorial Program.
EXHIBITIONS
CONRAD EGYIR: TERRA NULLIUS
JULY 2, 2020 – JANUARY 10, 2021
Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is the first solo museum show for Detroit-based visual artist, Conrad Egyir. For this debut, Egyir created a new body of work while in residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City, during the summer of 2019. The works in this show focus on figurative characters that reside or bestride three geographical spaces–Detroit, New York, and Aburi, Ghana–and how the cultures of each of these locations define citizenship, migration, hybrid spaces, and political and religious revolutions. At the core of the exhibition, is finding similarities among the three psycho-social terrains and synthesizing them into a new space “Terra Nullius.” Within this new place, devoid of political and legal constructs, its residents behave as stewards of time, resources, and space.
Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in partnership with International Studio & Curatorial Program. Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is coordinated by Tizziana Baldenebro, Ford Curatorial Fellow with curatorial insights from guest curator Larry Ossei-Mensah.
Exhibitions and public programs at MOCAD are supported by the A. Alfred Taubman Foundation. Lead funding for this exhibition is generously provided by The Kettering Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Jessica Silverman Gallery.
As the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit continues to monitor the Covid-19 pandemic and develop a reopening plan, the exhibition opening date of Conrad Egyir: Terra Nullius is subject to change.
Conrad Egyir, Ibtisam, 2020, Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.Conrad Egyir, On Code, 2020, Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
PRESS + MEDIA
Press Release Spring 2020 Exhibitions
Related EVENTS
Crimes Against Reality is the first solo museum exhibition of the New Red Order. In this exhibition, the NRO explores the desire for indigeneity through the lens of digital culture, experimental media, and emerging technology. Crimes Against Reality is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
EXHIBITIONS
NEW RED ORDER: CRIMES AGAINST REALITY
JULY 9, 2020 – JANUARY 10, 2021
New Red Order: Crimes Against Reality explores the desire for indigeneity through the lens of digital culture, experimental media, and emerging technology. Presented across two galleries at MOCAD, Crimes Against Reality includes new video commissions shot on-location in Detroit and Southeast Michigan.
New Red Order (NRO) is a public secret society facilitated by core contributors Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys. Working with an interdisciplinary network of informants—including Ashley Byler, Driftnote, Jim Fletcher, Inpatient Press, KITE, Maiingan "iNDiO1763" Wiikwedong, Kyleigh M. Mathewson, Tony Oursler, Laura Ortman, Jeremy Pheiffer, Gaile Pranckunaite, Walter Scott, Rezarta Seferi, Bayley Sweitzer, Walker Tate, Virgil Taylor, Kate Valk, and others—the NRO co-produces video, performance, and installation works that confront settler colonial tendencies and obstacles to Indigenous growth and agency.
Crimes Against Reality is the largest installment to date in Unboxing, an ongoing series of exhibitions, performances, and public programs dedicated to emerging ideas at the crossroads of technology, new media, and contemporary art. Unboxing is a spotlight for new perspectives on digital culture in the museum context. The series provides MOCAD with a dedicated platform for engaging topics unique to art of the twenty-first century.
New Red Order: Crimes Against Reality is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and curated by Pat Elifritz, Curator of New Media and Technology, with curatorial support from Tizziana Baldenebro, Ford Curatorial Fellow.
Exhibitions and public programs at MOCAD are supported by the A. Alfred Taubman Foundation. New Red Order: Crimes Against Reality is generously supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
New Red Order, CULTURE CAPTURE: TERMINAL ADDDITION, HD video, 2019, Photo: Courtesy of the artistsNew Red Order, CULTURE CAPTURE: TERMINAL ADDDITION, HD video, 2019, Photo: Courtesy of the artistsNew Red Order, The Violence of Civilization Without Secrets, HD video, 2017, Photo: Courtesy of the artistsNew Red Order, production still, 2019, Photo: Courtesy of the artists
