Platform: Williamson Brasfield + Ricardo Partida
Exhibition Dates:
April 3 – May 1, 2022
103 Allen Street, Lower East Side
1969 Gallery presents works by Williamson Brasfield and Ricardo Partida in conjunction with Platformart.com’s April selection.
Williamson Brasfield (Yale MFA ‘13 ) makes optically vibrant yet meditative paintings with repeating patterns of dots and lines. These regular units of mark making gain complexity and depth as they are overlaid. At once physical and ethereal, the paintings are a culmination of layers that combine to create a sense of movement and depth. Influenced by early modernism as well as ancient nonwestern traditions of painting, there is a stillness on the edge of collapse, a sense of movement which happens in the eye akin to a hallucination of movement, a reminder of the subjective nature of perception.
Ricardo Partida (SAIC MFA 20’) paints bodies that are objects of both contemplation and devotion, at once threatening and vulnerable, Tantric deity practice as erotic fantasy. Partida’s avatars exist in a place beyond a lens-based gaze but not unaware of it, the centralized figures in each painting acknowledge the viewer and seek to make direct eye contact. They both replicate and challenge power structures, turning the language of Western pop culture on its head.
Williamson Brasfield (b.1983) is a painter who creates hallucinogenic layered compositions with a strong interest in perception, stillness, and time. His work draws on Spiritualist and early Modernist traditions, but is also influenced by philosophy, poetry, and music. He lives and works in Brooklyn, and has exhibited his work in Managua, Nicaragua, New York City and Chicago.
Ricardo Partida (b. 1990) is a Mexican born, Chicago based painter and recent graduate from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio program. His work largely critiques and illuminates depictions of gender and desire in the Western Art Canon. Using the visual language of figura serpentinata, his works create exalted alter egos that question conventional power structures while obscuring artist and subject. Through the use of surface treatments, mark making, and hybridizing lines and proportions previously associated with a gendered painting language, his work creates surrogacies of seduction that explore carnal desires by creating a push and pull of menace and allure. Partida’s work has been exhibited nationally including Texas, Chicago, and New York.
For further information:
Inquiries: Mia Shlovsky | e: customerservice@platformart.com
https://www.platformart.com/artists/williamson-brasfield
https://www.platformart.com/artists/ricardo-partida
About 1969 Gallery
Founded in September 2016, 1969 is a contemporary art gallery, with two gallery spaces in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Tribeca neighborhoods. Through solo / group / external exhibitions and art fair presentations, the Gallery has cultivated the careers of its represented artists and a broader community of artists primarily devoted to painting.
Follow 1969 Gallery on Instagram via @1969gallery.