LOS ANGELES.- François Ghebaly has announced the representation of Willa Wasserman.
From convex still lifes and gauzy, vaporific self-portraits to impressive mise-en-scènes in polished brass and fine linen, American artist Willa Wasserman’s practice in painting and figuration is readily aligned with the world of dreams. Her images are loose and spectral––impressions plucked from the hazy essences of her sitters and various subjects, and at the same time cast in the pensive, indeterminate ambiance with which Wasserman embraces vital questions of intimacy, gender, and, above all, becoming.
The latter is both the lodestar and returning place in her work. In figure and process, Wasserman deftly interrelates histories of classical painting and material culture with contemporary portrayals of queerness. Brass and copper sheet, silver plate, precious metalpoint, and stretched linen comprise a growing array of closely studied materials that uniquely capture the latency in Wasserman’s gestures. Equally important, they offer keen metaphors for the potentiality at the heart of her practice.
Wasserman’s linseed oils age; her delicate silverpoints oxidize; caustic reagents transform her metal surfaces into iridescent, favrile patinas whose saturation continues to evolve throughout the lifespans of her artworks. With sincerity and lightness, Wasserman conducts these phantom throughlines into tender, moving silhouettes of sex, self, and metamorphosis.
Willa Wasserman (b. 1990, Evansville, IN) lives and works in New York. She gained her BFA at Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College in 2013, and received her MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; Downs & Ross, New York; Good Weather, Chicago; in lieu, Los Angeles; The Gallery at Michaels, Santa Monica; UCLA New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles; and Nothing Special, Los Angeles. Her work is currently on view in a group exhibition at Michael Werner Gallery, London; other prominent group exhibitions include Downs & Ross, New York; Adams and Ollman, Portland, Oregon; Sargent’s Daughters, New York; and Park View / Paul Soto, Los Angeles. Her upcoming solo exhibition at High Art, Paris opens in December, 2022.
