Robin F. Williams
Robin F. Williams
Out Lookers, 2021
oil and acrylic on canvas
60 x 60 ins.
152.4 x 152.4 cm
P·P·O·W is pleased to present Robin F. Williams’ Out Lookers. Known for her large-scale paintings of stylized, sentient, yet ambiguously generated female figures, Williams employs a variety of techniques, including oil, airbrush, poured paint, marbling, and staining of raw canvas to create deeply textured and complexly constructed paintings. Building upon previous visual investigations into the coded narratives of American media, Out Lookers extends Williams’ oeuvre into the supernatural with a new cohort of ghosts, cryptids, witches, and trolls. The paranormal subjects on view in this exhibition serve as prisms, casting light on a spectrum of female identities that contemporary society has all too often mistrusted, scapegoated, and demonized.
Combining a masterful technical understanding with an innate sense of curiosity, Williams imbues her atmospheric portraits with a distinctly contemporary sensibility. Williams draws much of her inspiration from social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. This new frontier for what Williams defines as contemporary folk art enriches her already layered approach to painting. Using an assortment of materials, including Flashe vinyl paint which gives a matte effect often used for industrial signage, Williams fuses practices from these social media channels with references to early modernism, pop culture, advertising, and cinema, to challenge the systemic conventions around representations of women.
Ebbing between abstraction and figuration, Williams subverts the conventional figure-ground relationship to transform restrictive female tropes into expanded matrices that transcend the body. Williams’ assembly of apparitions reclaim their consciousness, gazing outward at the viewer, they do not seek to be known. Williams explains, “Their bodies are windows into systems. They are unsolid and can’t be understood or blamed, but instead reveal something bigger than themselves.” In Out Lookers, Williams explores the flawed, malicious, menacing, and wild female characters from B-movies and cult classics which tend to argue that the flaws of women are inherently more dangerous than the flaws of men. “They make tidy stories out of this belief,” Williams asserts. “My paintings are looking to untidy those stories and test these cultural contradictions.”
Robin F. Williams
Final Girl Exodus, 2021
oil and acrylic on canvas
78 x 144 ins.
198.1 x 365.8 cm
Subverting these cultural contradictions and fundamentalist dichotomies surrounding women’s bodies, Williams also examines the parallels between the policing of non-binary identities and the rampant destruction of our broader ecological body. Aligning with Williams commitment to environmental justice, Out Lookers marks the first carbon-conscious exhibition at P·P·O·W. As part of ongoing efforts to support Galleries Commit and a climate-conscious future, P·P·O·W will track the carbon output throughout the planning and execution of Williams’ Out Lookers. At the end of the show, the gallery will make a donation to permanent, old-growth forest conservation with Galleries Commit x Art to Acres. To learn more about Galleries Commit, and sustainable gallery practices please click here.
In conjunction with Out Lookers, Pace Prints will present Final Resting Face, Williams’ first exhibition of fine art prints. These exhibitions will be accompanied by a collaboratively produced monograph featuring an essay by acclaimed author Carmen Maria Machado as well as a dialogue between Williams and Pace Editions’ master intaglio printer Sarah Carpenter.
Robin F. Williams (b. 1984) received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Williams has presented solo exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA; Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA; and Jack the Pelican Presents, Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally including Present Generations, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Bitter Nest, Galerie Perrotin, Tokyo, Japan; XENIA: Crossroads in Portrait Painting, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; Nicolas Party: Pastel, Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY; SEED, curated by Yvonne Force, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY; and more. Her work is currently in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Collection Majudia, Montreal, Canada; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; X Museum, Beijing, China; among others.
Robin F. Williams
Out Lookers, 2021
oil and acrylic on canvas
60 x 60 ins.
152.4 x 152.4 cm
Robin F. Williams
Space Angel, 2020
oil, acrylic, and oil stick on canvas
68 x 84 ins.
172.7 x 213.4 cm
Robin F. Williams
Out Witch, 2020
acrylic on canvas
66 x 66 ins.
167.6 x 167.6 cm
Robin F. Williams
Water Witches, 2021
oil and acrylic on canvas
82 x 120 ins.
208.3 x 304.8 cm
Robin F. Williams
Ghost in Labor, 2020
oil, acrylic and oil stick on canvas
64 x 84 ins.
162.6 x 213.4 cm
Robin F. Williams
Ghost at War, 2020
oil and acrylic on canvas
66 x 66 ins.
167.6 x 167.6 cm
Robin F. Williams
A Sound Around No One, 2021
acrylic and oil stick on canvas
66 x 56 ins.
167.6 x 142.2 cm
Robin F. Williams
Troll, 2021
oil, acrylic and Flashe on canvas
72 x 50 ins.
182.9 x 127 cm
Robin F. Williams
Final Girl Exodus, 2021
oil and acrylic on canvas
78 x 144 ins.
198.1 x 365.8 cm
Robin F. Williams
Trolling, 2021
oil and acrylic on canvas
76 x 60 ins.
193 x 152.4 cm
Robin F. Williams
Unphased, 2021
acrylic on canvas
66 x 50 ins.
167.6 x 127 cm
Robin F. Williams
Stalkers, 2020
oil, acrylic and Flashe on canvas
78 x 78 ins.
198.1 x 198.1 cm
Robin F. Williams
Bechdel Yetis, 2020
oil, acrylic and Flashe on canvas
96 x 66 ins.
243.8 x 167.6 cm
Robin F. Williams
Mood Swing, 2020
oil, acrylic and oil stick on canvas
78 x 53 ins.
198.1 x 134.6 cm
Robin F. Williams
Speak of the Devil, 2021
acrylic on canvas
57 x 57 ins.
144.8 x 144.8 cm
It’s not every day you find yourself standing between two paintings of trolls waving at one another, but that’s exactly what you would have found in Robin F. Williams’s recent show, “Out Lookers,” at P·P·O·W Gallery in New York. Challenging how women are often depicted as scapegoats or untrustworthy figures in popular culture, the artist’s larger-than-life ghosts, witches and supernatural beings bear important messages about social justice, sustainability and issues facing women throughout history. A climate activist and founding member of the environmentalist group Artists Commit, Williams speaks about sustainability in the art industry and the importance of embracing time off.
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Robin F. Williams’ latest solo show Out Lookers at P·P·O·W teeters between dream and nightmare. It’s unnerving and off-putting with witches, ghosts and trolls whose eyes burn like balls of fire. At the same time, it’s exciting, inviting and challenges us to embrace discomfort. Even the accompanying catalogue by Carmen Maria Machado starts out with a degree of unease: “Come Here. Come Here. Do you believe in ghosts? It doesn’t matter. They believe in you.” Out Lookers plays upon this discomfort and invites the viewer to enter Williams’ supernatural world full of subtle references to urban legends, climate change and horror films. Reframing the way in which women are portrayed in popular culture as scapegoats or mistrusted characters, Williams’ figures are powerful, larger than life and waiting to stare right back at the viewer.
No matter how she evolves as a painter, you can recognize a Robin F Williams work right off the bat. It's a gift of talent. If you were to look at her works from a decade ago to now, they have morphed and transformed in so many different directions and yet there is a core that remains the same. There is a challenge of body, of selfhood, of something otherworldly in all of us. Her newest body of work, Out Lookers, is on view now at PPOW Gallery through November 13, 2021.
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“I want it to feel as though these women are getting the last laugh,” artist Robin Francesca Williams explains about the toothy grins in her atmospheric portraits. With much of her work, Williams aims to show how women have been mistrusted, scapegoated, and demonized, but also to expose the expectation of their moral superiority, that they must kindly demonstrate purity and unconditional love on behalf of mankind.
