If the walls had eyes, how would they see?
Wilmer Wilson IV explores the ever-changing relationship between the city and its inhabitants through an intermedia lexicon consisting of performance, photography, and sculpture. Devices associated with public posting and information-sharing feature prominently in his process. His sculptures organized staples as both armor and shroud, obscuring and protecting imagery of unknown figures with near-impenetrable swaths of staples. Now, reducing his compositions to their basic elemental components, Wilson IV acknowledges the interplay of wood and metal as fundamental built-environment materials. This exhibition showcases his mastery of this unique form by elaborating upon the interplay of these materials, removing the photographic image altogether. A love letter to the process, Wilson IV extrapolates while simultaneously simplifying his approach, expanding the lexicon of staple-as-mark. In this new body of work the staple appears as a fully expressive line. Continuing to investigate the relationships between figure and environment, city and dweller, viewer and viewed, Wilson IV speculates impossible infrastructures and anonymous personas as surrogates for his inspection of sociality.
Dense swarms of staples mirror bustling crowds, parting around and merging into structures, junctures, and one another. The staples undulate and settle into the compositions, inciting visually dynamic movement. In some areas, the staples coalesce to reveal a figure, and in others, they skirt negative spaces, hinting at unidentifiable systems of groundwork or construction. Somewhere between drawings and relief sculptures, the exhibition comprises figurative and abstract works that implement staples as both the gesture of portraiture and as the foundations of “quasi-blueprints” denoting architectural structures. The austere nature of the materials heightens this edificial context, as minimally-treated plywood forms the foundations into which the metal fasteners penetrate. The city is undeniably present in the work; inhabitant as both mark and maker of mark, congregations of staples as evidence of dense populations, and topographical inspiration. In consideration of the constructed experience, Wilson IV asserts his method of representation while breaking new ground in his exploration of individual and collective legacy.
WILMER WILSON IV (b. 1989) investigates the marginalization and care of Black bodies in contemporary life. Born in Richmond, VA and based in Philadelphia, Wilson is concerned with “the way that blackness is shaped in and by city space” and interested in “producing possibilities for representation that exist apart from global advertising strategies.” Wilson holds a BFA from Howard University (2012) and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania (2015). The artist has been part of exhibitions and performances at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2023); the Murray Art Museum, Albury Australia (2023); the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia (2022); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2021); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2021); New Orleans Museum of Art (2019); New Museum Triennial, NYC (2018); Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (2017); Flanders Fields Museum, Belgium (2017); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2015); and the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2015). His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; The Phillips Collection; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others.
