I’ve been in a nostalgic mood this summer, and something about a wandering spirit has caught my attention. I think about Justin Williams’ works like that, a sort of wandering nomadic soul that captures the spirit of a past life, a past time, a temporary moment. It’s a fantasy of the past but a dream.
Castles Out of Grass, on view for just a few more days at Semiose in Paris, feels like Williams has found the perfect zone between memory and dream. I was struck that when I began to read Nikolaj Schultz’ essay on the paintings that I, too, had a similar reaction, that there was this interzone experience at seeing the works. They feel like fables as old as time but of some distant future not fully realized. Nikolaj writes “That travelling through different times and worlds goes hand in hand is surely something we are all painfully experiencing today, at a moment when our world suddenly feels both familiar and yet so unfamiliar.” That seems to touch on a cultural zeitgeist. We are able to receive information and a version of the truth so quickly, our life and whims catered so precisely, that when we see a work of art that feels unearthed from a different realm we begin to understand what is to be surprised. To be amazed. To feel wonder. These works do that. —Evan Pricco
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