Questions for Mark Williams

Virginia Billeaud Anderson

Two days after Mark Williams notified me of his Houston exhibition, The Illusion of the Precise: Robert Ryman, Mark Williams, Todd Williamson at Wade Wilson Art through February 2, he informed me he is exhibiting at Fruehsorge in Berlin through February 23. Aesthetic dissimilarity between the two presentations is indicative of the artist’s ongoing experimentation with materials and processes. In an earlier post, Williams spoke of uninterrupted “interest in structure (the grid) and gesture (the paint.)” He also listed a few artists at whose works he looks closely while working his day job as installer at MOMA, some favorites being “Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Anne Truitt, Donald Judd, Robert Ryman, Mark Rothko, Dan Flavin and Blinky Palermo.” I asked Williams a few questions about his current exhibitions.

Virginia Billeaud Anderson: What do you think about Wade Wilson continuing to link you to Ryman, which he did last year for his Impressions exhibition? Do you perceive any connection between you and Ryman?

Mark Williams: I suspect that Wade recognizes a workman-like connection between us. Both Robert Ryman and I have an investigative approach to art making. We experiment and try new materials in a variety of combinations. I came across this statement and it pretty much describes my approach to art making: the reality of paint and process is a high-priority. I think Ryman would agree.

VBA: Please give me a brief description of the work you are exhibiting at Wade Wilson Art, how many pieces, their size and materials. Tell me about your process.

MW: There are four framed works on paper and one large painting on canvas at Wade Wilson Art in Houston. The works on paper were made using enamel paint, acrylic paint, and alkyd paint. The paint was applied with inexpensive brushes which I purchase at a hardware store. The paper is 14" x 11". I started with a two simple restrictions/rules that I set for myself, use vertical and horizontal edges exclusively, and use only rectangular forms. Oh, and one more rule: all forms must be anchored to at least one edge of the image. By alternating applications of paint and tape, and its removal, surface and image are developed simultaneously. These steps are improvisational, it's a rather organic process. I may repeat this process several times before determining that a work is finished. How do I know a work is finished, it has an intuitive sense of rightness.

The large painting is titled Homage to White (2010, 90" x 72 1/2"). The oil enamel, alkyd, and acrylic paints were applied with a brush. White is the dominant color. It is applied over dark rectangular shapes, radically flattening the pictorial space of the painting.


Mark Williams, four untitled works, 2007 (Wade Willson Art installation view), oil enamel, alkyd and acrylic on paper, each 14" x 11"

VBA: I’m charmed by a piece you are showing at Fruehsorge in Berlin. Its loopy forms are unexpected and lovely after so many grids. You created this more organic image about the same time you were painting large boldly colored rectangular forms in acrylic on canvas. Say something about these aesthetic variations.

MW: Yes, these artworks were shown recently in Berlin at Fruehsorge Contemporary Drawings. They are made of oil paint on gridded paper. Here the grid has a supporting role. Each sheet is 8 1/2" x 11". I began making works of this group back around 2005. My drawing tool is a piece of found plastic. It has a wonderful elliptical shape and I instantly thought I might be able to use it as both a drawing tool and a printmaking tool. It appealed to me. At the time, I immediately set out to see what I could make with it. I worked on many different papers and on Mylar and plywood, too. The results were hybrids: part drawing, part monotype. They have the appearance of being a kind of writing, glyphs for an unknown language. Again, an intuitive process. Sometimes it takes new tools to make new art.


Mark Williams, Untitled, 2005, Oil on paper, 14 x 11 inches

VBA: Do you assign any personal meaning to the circular forms, or is this strictly one of your formal exercises?

MW: Not sure what I expected, however, I was surprised by the sensual forms I made.

VBA: Is there anything you want readers to know about you or your art, particularly something unexpected or not written about in the past?

MW: I am driven by curiosity and process. I have no agenda. Everything you need to know is carried within each artwork.

Aroused: A Closer Look at Mark Williams’ Untitled 2012

Virginia Billeaud Anderson

Not long after the gurus at ARTnews defined his paint application as “mechanical,” Mark Williams offers a restless geometric abstraction with ambiguous blurred elements that veer into gestural. You have to stand before Untitled, 2012 at Wade Wilson Art to see its vitality, this work’s uneven paint, enhancing imperfections and overall translucence are not visible in a reproduction.

The shift from controlled and programmatic to somewhat disordered made me want to ask questions so I contacted Williams. He made Untitled he said by painting oil on polypropylene with a silkscreen squeegee. First he created a grid by placing vertical and horizontal strips of tape on glass. In constructing this preliminary “design” or template, applying and removing tape, he worked intuitively. The grid’s resulting imperfections compel him to call it “a broken grid.” He then painted the sheet of plastic as it lay above the grid, and here was also improvisational, applying paint as messy and liberated as he pleased.


Mark Williams, Untitled, 2012, Oil on polypropylene, 40" x 52"

When I met Williams he used tape more precisely. To create Untitled, 2011, painted layers of frosted mylar for the Synthetic Supports: Plastic is the New Paper exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, he used tape to design the painted areas. We discussed the fact that tape had a different role for the Wade Wilson piece. “It is true,” he said. “I have eliminated the use of tape as a masking element. Now tape has a new function, it becomes a template.”

The 2011 show at MFAH thematically focused on the use of polymer by contemporary artists such as Williams, and in it he showed that layers of painted plastic assumed weird depth and refraction. For that show Curator Rebecca Dunham also pulled from MFAH’s permanent collection, so we got to see art by some of the biggies, such as two drawings by Jasper Johns who pioneered the technique of ink on plastic. “I’m hanging next to a Man Ray,” Lucinda Cobley who was also in the show told me, “it can’t get better than that.”


Mark Williams, Untitled, 2011, Paint on stacked layers of mylar in the exhibition Synthetic Supports: Plastic is the New Paper

Williams did not begin experimenting with plastic until 2010, so ARTnews could not have known of looser brushstrokes to come. In his article Christopher French described Williams’ use of tape to paint large monochrome geometric forms on canvas and correctly noted busy-ness from opposing geometrics and “uncertainty” at the forms’ edges, by which he meant expressive irregularities at the tape-defined borders, as in the painting Choice. The critic went on to write, “If the main forms broadcast a straightforward geometry, his marginalia add the sort of pathos associated with Robert Motherwell’s paintings,” and that is a lovely thing to say about a painter.


Mark Williams, Choice, 2006, Acrylic on canvas, 40” x 60”

Ink drawings from 2007 and 2008 indicate a certain delight in imprecise forms and serve as forewarning of gestural strokes on plastic. These works on paper are elegantly ill-defined. He recently displayed drawings in a solo exhibition at the Galerie Schlegl in Zurich.


Mark Williams, Untitled #9, 2008, Ink on paper drawing, 12” x 9”

Summing up his thoughts about Untitled, 2012 at Wade Wilson, Williams said, “it is the result of my ongoing interest in structure (the grid) and gesture (the paint).” But he appears to be aroused by the paint.

Williams and I had booze together (research) so I know a little about him. For years he has worked as an art installer at MoMA. Now try to imagine having your hands, literally, on that art, installing the de Kooning show, the Cindy Sherman, moving works in and out for light and temperature control. How can that not overwhelmingly impact his output?

So who does he look at? “As I move through the museum certain works do catch my eye,” he said. “Some favorite artists are: Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Anne Truitt, Donald Judd, Robert Ryman, Mark Rothko, Dan Flavin and Blinky Palermo.” Ryman is included in the Impressions show at Wade Wilson Art through July 7.