LONDON.- MASSIMODECARLO is beginning 2024 with Not Too Near, Not Too Far, an exhibition dedicated to the pioneering artists Mike Henderson and William T. Wiley. Following an initial encounter at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1970 the two artists shared interwoven artistic trajectories across a fifty-year friendship. Though both were sceptical of strict ideologies, preferring to forge individual artistic paths, the exhibition charts their encounters and involvement with revolutionary artistic and political movements in San Francisco, including Bay Area Abstract Expressionism, the Funk Movement, Bay Area Figuration and the Civil Rights Movement.

Embracing the experimental approach to art making they endorsed while teaching at the revered UC Davis art programme, Henderson and Wiley freely used different materials and approaches to suit their needs. Not Too Near, Not Too Far brings their shared experiences to life through a collection of works curated by Dr. Francesca Wilmott, focussing on the artists' fluctuating movement between figuration and abstraction. The exhibition’s title, Not Too Near, Not Too Far, encapsulates their symbiotic but distinct artistic practices while collaborating on music and films, and exchanging ideas related to painting, politics, and teaching.

Mike Henderson

Mike Henderson was born in 1944 in Marshall, Missouri; he lives and works in San Francisco, California.

An integral part of the Bay Area arts scene for over fifty years, Mike Henderson moved from rural Missouri to attend the San Francisco Art Institute in 1965. His early works firmly established him within the contemporary atmosphere of protest and social justice, creating a series of figurative overtly political works that responded to the Civil Rights Movement, The Vietnam War and the experience of the Black community. As important responses to these issues Henderson’s works were quickly shown in key exhibitions of the era: Whitney Museum of American Art: Human Concern / Personal Torment: The Grotesque in American Art (1969) and Contemporary Black Artists in America (1971). Today, the works are being rediscovered and finding a

renewed relevance within our social and political climate, with a number of significant works recently acquired by institutions and exhibited in the landmark travelling exhibition Soul of A Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983 (2019).

As a multi-talented artist, musician and filmmaker, inspiration for Henderson’s work came from multiple sources. Henderson was equally influenced by his West-Coast contemporaries, friends and those he studied alongside such as Jay de Feo, Joan Brown, Robert Colescott and Bruce Nauman as he was by the European masters he admired in exhibitions, in particular Vincent Van Gogh. Throughout the 1970s Henderson’s work moved away from figuration towards a gestural and more eclectic approach, aligning his work with post-war abstraction and drawing on the spirit
of improvisation which he practiced as a blues guitarist playing alongside the likes of John Lee Hooker and Albert King and his admiration for the virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix and Muddy Waters.

His work from the 90s to today focusses on the interaction between texture, colour and form. Henderson’s 1990s series, The Black Paintings, has a noticeable reduction in palette inspired by the subtle light and shadows seen within the darkness of night and the minimal colour scheme of Giorgio Morandi that the artist admired on an influential trip he took to Europe in 1985. The trip also prompted a return to oil paint, the diverse properties of which he exploited within the series by working the paintings’ surfaces to explore space by scraping and layering paint. With The Black Paintings Henderson aimed to ‘express sound within the space of the canvas’.

Henderson has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1973) and two National Endowment for the Arts Artist Grants (1989, 1978). Henderson’s paintings and films have been exhibited in institutions such as Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris,
France; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Mike Henderson, Before the Fire, 1965-1985, Museum of Art, University of California, Davis, CA (2022); Honest to Goodness, San Francisco Art Institute, CA (2019); The Black Paintings at Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2019).

Group exhibitions include: Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963- 1983, travelling exhibition: Tate Modern, London, UK; The Broad, Los Angeles, CA, US; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA (2019); Vision & Spirit: African American Art | Works From The Bank Of America Collection, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture, Charlotte, NC (2021) and What You See Is What You Get, MASSIMODECARLO, Milan, Italy (2022).

William T. Wiley

William T. Wiley was born in 1937 in Bedford, IN. He died after a sixty- year career in Novato, CA.

Over his extensive career Wiley has addressed some of the most urgent social, political and environmental issues with a distinctive blend of wit and wisdom. His work is densely layered with complex riddles, steeped in profound personal meaning. One of the most significant and influential artists associated with the Funk movement, Wiley has often defied art historical labels, charting a course entirely his own. Alongside Robert Arneson, Wayne Thiebaud and Roy De Forest, Wiley formed one of the most experimental and widely revered art programs in the country at UC Davis, teaching there from 1962 to 1973. Among his students were Bruce Nauman and Mary Heilmann, artists with whom Wiley shared a lifelong friendship.

Recent institutional solo exhibitions include: William T. Wiley: & So..., curated by Jennifer Gately and Jennifer Wechsler, Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA (2022); William T. Wiley and the Slant Step: All on the Line, curated by Dan Nadel, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA (2022); Con-Fusion-Ism, SFMoMA, CA, USA(2020); I Keep Foolin’ Around:

William T. Wiley as Printmaker, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA (2010) and What’s It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; travelled to Berkeley Art Museum, CA (2009).

Wiley’s work is included in the collections of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Stedelijk van Abbemuseum; Walker Art Center; and Whitney Museum of American Art; among many other public instituations.

MASSIMODECARLO
'Mike Henderson & William T. Wiley: Not Too Near, Not Too Far'
January 16th, 2024 - February 17th, 2024