NEW YORK, NY.- Casey Kaplan announced representation of Amanda Williams.

Amanda Williams (b. 1974, Evanston, IL) deconstructs the physical and psychological systems of inequity associated with race. Informed by her architectural background, Williams’ command of space shapes her meditations on race, color and value. Drawing from an array of source material and using color as an operative logic to interpret the elusive meaning of ‘blackness,’ Williams complicates readings of our spatial surroundings. With a multidisciplinary practice that spans painting, works on paper, photography, sculpture and installation, Williams communicates through a chromatic language of abstract and material means.

Historically discriminatory spatial policies have left a deep-seated imprint on Black neighborhoods nationwide. Williams traces these effects through projects that aim to make new territories. From her Cadastral Shaking map series of screen and relief prints (2019) to museum-based interventions seen in Roll Out the Red Carpet to White Flight (They Didn't Pitch a Tent in the Open Prairie) (2019), Williams exhaustively tests varying formats for agitating the mapping system known as redlining.

From its inception, redlining cemented the inherency of racial discrimination and socio-economic instability as a cornerstone of modern American cities. The 2022 series Redefining Redlining (in which Williams planted a field of 100,000 red tulips in Washington Park on the absent footprints of demolished residential buildings) and Color(ed) Theory (a site-specific public project begun in 2014 and debuted at the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial that considers the color-coded hues of Chicago’s southside) act as through-lines. Color(ed) Theory encompassed eight houses marked for demolition and repurposed as a blank canvas painted in a palette of her own making. Each paint color manifested the tonalities of products marketed for black consumption; the marine of Ultrasheen hair grease or the velvet purple of Crown Royal bags foregrounded homes condemned to be forgotten. While each house ultimately suffered its preconditioned fate and exists today only in photographic documentation, for a time, their reimagined condition provided levity and uplifting encounters.

Taking Joseph Albers’ theories on color relativity as a point of departure, Williams’ studio-based works consider the implications of the simultaneity of color as a chromatic and social signifier of Black identity. Often engaging with linguistic whimsy and spatio-chromatic wordplay, Williams’ projects represent a turn around the color wheel—red, gold, indigo and black. In June of 2020, the artist produced a series of digital quips in response to the Instagram movement of #blackouttuesday, the call to post a solid black square in protest of police brutality. For Williams, this rush to solidarity brought to light questions around the subjectivity of the color black. Challenging a monolithic square as representation of a nuanced and complex range of ‘blackness,' Williams posted over 120 captions chronicling types of blackness, and accompanying abstracted images saturated with subtle shades, impressions of textures, and obscured contours. In 2021, Williams translated the elusive digital series, titled What Black Is This You Say?, to paint on panel in a public installation at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City.

For Williams’ first presentation with Casey Kaplan at Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, the artist continues this exploration in a series of oil on panel paintings in the same square format as the social media grid. In What black is this you say?– “A west side imma snatch-yo-edges-back-with-a-hand-gesture black” –black (08.27.2020), v1 (2023), Williams reinterprets her original Instagram images in pours, scrapes, and build-ups of paint. The series, which was exhibited in the group exhibition, The Long Dream at the MCA Chicago (2020) and featured at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago (2020), marks an evolving painting practice that recently developed into the CANDYLADYBLACK series (2022–), which celebrates the local “candy lady,” a fixture of urban neighborhoods in the U.S. The interplay of ultra-matte and syrup-like surfaces attributed to the What Black is This You Say? series create subtle texture and illusions of pictorial depth. Color combinations of deep reds, greens and blues connote both the color black and ‘blackness’ in all its brilliance.

Amanda Williams lives and works in Chicago, IL. Williams received a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University, NY in 1997. In 2015, Williams presented Color(ed) Theory, a breakthrough project for the artist that was exhibited as part of the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial. This series has continued to inform Williams’ work over the last decade, including the artist’s 2019 TED talk. Recent exhibitions and biennales include Amanda Williams: Embodied Sensations, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2021) (solo), for which Williams rearranged furniture that was removed from the museum during the pandemic to prompt visitor engagement; Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2021); Amanda Williams: An Imposing Number of Times, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA (2020) (solo); Thrival Geographies (In My Mind I See a Line), Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy (2018) for which Williams and Andres L. Hernandez collaborated with Shani Crowe to create a sculptural installation of braided cord encrusting a steel framed pod, in the courtyard of the US Pavilion; and Chicago Works: Amanda Williams, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2017) (solo). Public commissions include Redefining Redlining, Chicago, IL (2022), a field of 100,000 red tulips in Washington Park, Chicago planted on the absent footprints of demolished residential buildings; What Black is This You Say?, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, NY (2021); and A Way, Away (Listen While I Say), Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO (2017). A forthcoming permanent sculpture celebrating Shirley Chisholm will live in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY. Williams is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2022), along with many other notable awards including Chicagoans of the Year (2023), USA Ford Fellow, and a Joan Mitchell Painting and Sculpture Fellow. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; among others. Williams is co-represented by Casey Kaplan in New York and Rhona Hoffman in Chicago.

Williams will present her inaugural solo exhibition with Casey Kaplan in March of 2025.