WILLIAM VILLALONGO
Zero Gravity 1, 2018
Acrylic, paper collage and cut velour paper
39 7/8 x 109 5/16 in. Sheet
45 1/2 x 114 3/4 x 2 1/2 in. Frame
45 1/2 x 114 3/4 x 2 1/2 in. Frame
Photo: Argenis Apolinario, NYC
At a time when current events and statistics reflect a social reality of limited expectations, contingency, and disproportionate fear for the Black body, Villalongo reconsiders and modifies that body to...
At a time when current events and statistics reflect a social reality of limited expectations, contingency, and disproportionate fear for the Black body, Villalongo reconsiders and modifies that body to circumvent corporeality. Within the dark tones of these meditations on physiology, the artist uses metaphors of invisibility, nature, and reformation as necessary conditions of Black male being. Like fallen autumn leaves, Villalongo's figures navigate their world, subject to an unpredictable wind - piling, spinning, re-collecting and migrating. Figures float in space, dreamlike, liminal, ill-defined much like the accumulated notions of what it is to be Black in the world.