I have been working with Jim Williams for almost two years on a project that has evolved into an exhibition of his work to take place in Salt Lake City, UT next month (June). The first time I met Jim, I visited his house in the avenues--which is the focus of the project. It felt perhaps similar what it must have been like to discover Henry Darger's room; an entire domicile made into an installation that contains all of the objects of a person's life. I have written a book about Jim and his home, Tj Nelson photographed it, and it sparked the idea to display the home outside of itself--a unprecedented gesture for Jim, and unusual and interesting art exhibition for Salt Lake. This has been a long time coming, and we are very excited that the project is near fruition.
A little more about Jim:
Working across several modes of expression (drawing, painting, photo, collage, installation, sculpture, and performance), Williams aims to expose each facet of self through the lens of the narcissistic and isolated artist in his decades-long (and counting) self portrait.
As a student of art in the late 1960s and early 70s, Williams witnessed and was influenced by key art movements that are ultimately evidenced in his current self portrait project—one he has been working on for the past twenty-five years. Through the meticulous and constant arranging, collaging, and staging of his work in his home, William’s practice has expanded to include the very gestures of his everyday life. Taking fragments, pictures of pictures of his early work, and life ‘dander’ (personal events, photos, mementos), he creates generational, fractal-like sets that span decades and occupy his entire living space. His self-image, at different ages, and as different egos, permeates the house, his clothing, and almost any object that leaves or intersects with the home. All of the works he has been creating are parts to a whole, and singularly function as mere components to a composite self portrait that extends beyond objects created in a studio.
In June, 2011, the work of the last twenty-five years, seen mostly by those who physically visit his home, will culminate in a major exhibition; the crescendo of the project being the gesture of removing the work from the home and re-creating its environment in another location. In this way, he will literally use time as media, and present an installation that contains artifacts from his life as a portrait. The notion of façade, a prevalent theme in his work, will be embodied in part by an impersonator of him who will attend the opening to represent the removed self that results from the acting of putting personal work on public display.
