Justin Williams
Justin Williams is a contemporary artist who creates figurative and representational artworks that center around themes of community, migration, and ways of life.
Biography of Justin Williams
Justin Williams was born in 1984 in Melbourne, Australia. He studied at Swinburne University, where he obtained a Bachelor of Communication and Design, majoring in Printmaking and Illustration, in 2004.
The artist has held numerous solo exhibitions, including "A Touch of Norway," Lapis Lazuli Pop Up Factory Gallery, Melbourne, Australia (2012); "Figures & Vessels," Silas von Morisse Gallery, New York, USA (2016); "Arcana part II," Galerie l'Inlassable, Paris, France (2018); "An Invitation," Sade Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2019); "Drowning Men Are Supposed To," COMA, Sydney, Australia (2021); "Justin Williams," Galerie Crèvecœur, Paris, France (2022), and many more.
Additionally, Justin Williams has participated in various group shows, including "Trouble in Paradise," Paradise Hills Gallery, Melbourne, Australia (2012); "Crushed Bone / Wet Rock," COMA, Sydney, Australia (2020); Miami Beach, with Galerie Crèvecœur, Miami, USA (2022); "The Throat of Snake," COMA, Sydney, Australia (2022), among others.
Currently, he lives and works in Santa Fe, USA.
Justin Williams's Art Style
Exploring the internal conflict between light and dark, beauty and hostility, legends and truth, Williams presents a raw and unfiltered perspective. Williams's creations, much like the people and stories they depict, exist in a state of both completion and ongoing transformation. Through his paintings, he unveils landscapes that resonate between the realms of the public and the concealed. Meanwhile, his sculptures give voice to characters navigating the embrace of an almost suffocating forest environment.
Executed using murky oil paints and delicate color washes, Williams' figures and landscapes appear to levitate on the canvas, radiating an inner luminosity. Through these pieces, the artist strives to capture the journey of his grandparents' migration from Egypt to Australia. Simultaneously, he conveys his personal perspective as an outsider, exploring concepts of location and time, as well as concealed norms within communities or individuals. Williams regards his own ancestry as something to which he is inherently close, but paradoxically, he was not directly exposed to it. Therefore, a distant, and even historical, viewpoint is enlisted.