Exhibitions
11 Feb 11 Mar 2022
BEACON 2022
William Villalongo
in collaboration with Igor Santos
curated by BHMF with the support of The American Academy in Rome and The Recovery Plan
We cordially invite you and your friends to the opening of the exhibition.
Soft Opening: Friday, 11 February, 4 – 8 pm
Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday, 2 - 6 pm and by appointment in compliance with anti-Covid regulations
Ausstellungsansicht, William Villalongo, Keep Your Head to the Sky, 2021, Courtesy of ©Villalong Studio LLC & Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC
Ausstellungsansicht, William Villalongo, Keep Your Head to the Sky, 2021, Courtesy of ©Villalong Studio LLC & Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC
Ausstellungsansicht, William Villalongo, Keep Your Head to the Sky, 2021, Courtesy of ©Villalong Studio LLC & Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC
Ausstellungsansicht, William Villalongo, Keep Your Head to the Sky, 2021, Courtesy of ©Villalong Studio LLC & Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC
Ausstellungsansicht, William Villalongo, Keep Your Head to the Sky, 2021, Courtesy of ©Villalong Studio LLC & Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC
photos: Ela Bialkowska /OKNOstudio
Artist Willian Villalongo's work expands the imaginaries of historical continuums and blurs the perceptions and assumptions connected to visibility and the Black past. Beacon 2022 exists as an installation tethered to, yet free from physical properties of reflective light and gravity. The work brings together references that overlap the Black Mediterranean and the Black Atlantic as geographies and diasporic bridges. The work's title refers to the alignment of stars used to navigate out of the slavery of the US south and the metaphoric pathways of selfcare and imagination. A range of vessels, shells and objects dangle from links of fat gold chains as charms, talismans, protective gestures and reminders. The mythological dimensions of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea as containers of trauma, forced displacement, and as a gravesite that is still growing is bisected by the aspirational nature of the range of found objects, resurfaced with velvet imbuing them with warmth softness and depth. The visual composition of the work expands and informs the sonic elements that are the fruit of Villalongo's collaboration with composer Igor Santos. The soundscape that is integrated into the work draws upon both artists' interest in the movement and metaphor of water.
The exhibition is part of the 2022 edition of Black History Fuori le Mura*.
William Villalongo was born in the United States in 1975. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and his MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture residency. Villalongo's creative output involves studio practice, writing and curatorial projects. His figurative paintings, works on paper and sculpture are concerned with representing the Black subject against notions of race and explore metaphors for mythology, wayfinding and liberation. Critically acclaimed curatorial projects such as American Beauty at Susan Inglett Gallery in 2013 and Black Pulp! touring nationally between 2016 – 2018 explore the intersections of politics, history and art. He is the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. His work resides in several notable public collections including The Studio Museum In Harlem, Princeton University Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and The Whitney Museum of American Art. William Villalongo currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is an Associate Professor at The Cooper Union School of Art. Villalongo is currently in residence at the American Academy in Rome as a 2022 Jules Guerin & Harold M. English Rome Prize Fellow.
Igor Santos is a native of Curitiba, BR. He has earned degrees in Music Composition from the University of Chicago (Ph.D), the Eastman School of Music (M.A), and the University of South Florida (B.M). His works engage with microtonal harmonic systems and the use every day sounds as sonic building blocks (often in a mimetic relationship with live instruments). Santos has been awarded the Rome Prize from American Academy in Rome (2022), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021), The Ferruccio Busoni Prize from the Academy of Arts in Berlin (2021), and has won additional first prizes in the Luigi Nono International Competition, the RED NOTE Competition, and the second prize in the Salvatore Martirano Award, in addition to Best Sound Design for his incidental music with Theatre Tampa Bay.
Black History Fuori le Mura*
This edition of Black History Fuori le Mura is framed through the thematic title FUGA. FUGA is a meditation on the fugitivity of Blackness (Moten, Harney 2013) and its non-fixity permeating geocultural realities and blurring the lines between the local and the transnational. It is also a reflection on the push back that continues to persist in the Italian context in relation to discourse around peoples and cultures of African descent prompting many towards flight. FUGA in music is a compositional element where a melodic theme is introduced by one voice only to be taken up successively by others. This edition wants to provide the call and response necessary to collectively engage in the work that needs to be done in order to move beyond the conceptions that are too often restricted by the flatness and limited frame of Blackness as reflected in mass media, institutional structures and academic discourse in Italy
With the kind support of
