HUDDLE
ALEXANDER BERGGRUEN, NEW YORK, 2024
In contrast to many of her previous paintings, none of the figures in this exhibition appear alone. For instance, Williams’s largest work in the show Passing Dance: Bougainvillea, depicts three figures marching forward in unison, leaping across the canvas from left to right. Most of these figures’ bodies are covered by stripes suggesting fences, bars, or guard rails, yet their feet are not behind these bars, as if they are breaking free of their constraints. Her triptych A Passing Dance: A Tulip Dome Sits Atop a Bent Back features a similar momentum, but here, each figure’s arched niche carries a Tulip Dome. From left to right, the sun sets beyond the figure, and the tulip blooms. Like a map of her creative process, the backs of her arched figures usher in her Tulip Domes and Huddle series.
Stemming from her focus on the arch of a bent figure, the conception of this show emerged from architectural research into domes as a series of lateral and vertical arches. The artist’s inquiry into domes focused on classic architectural drawings and included structures with an oculus, such as the Pantheon. An oculus—a circular opening at the apex of a dome—allows air, weather, and light into the space, casting a perfect, perhaps heavenly, circle of light, akin to that seen in Williams’s paintings A Dome in Spring and Huddled: Oculus 1. Williams notes: “Looking at the dome as an organized group of arches that construct a spacious, uninterrupted center still capable of bearing tremendous weight evoked for me the symbolic structure of a gathering.”
An arch is to a single bent back, as a dome is to a huddle of bowed, open-armed bodies. Finding inspiration from bodies gathered in unison in images of sports teams, family groupings, circles of women communing, people piling together in play, and spiritual gatherings, Williams’s domes are often constructed from a collection of figures leaning on one another in a circle. As the artist often considers the sonic qualities of the figures and spaces she paints, the dome affords an opportunity for sharing secrets and amplifying voices. Huddles grant the possibility for joyous, sacred, and private moments. Williams honors this privacy and creates mystery by depicting her huddles from an outsider’s perspective, leaving a viewer to imagine the plans, prayers, laughter, and supportive words that are being shared.
