Enos Williams: Turning Green Blue is Alchemy

Press Release

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present Enos Williams: Turning Green Blue is Alchemy, a memorial exhibition for friend and artist Enos Williams 1958-2024. We invite you to join us for the reception on Thursday, November 6, 6-8pm.

Enos Williams earned his Bachelor of Arts in Sculpture with a minor in Italian from SUNY, Albany in 1992, followed by an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995. His formative years in New York, a multicultural city, shaped experiences that blended personal and collective memories with keen curiosity and willingness to connect with individuals from all backgrounds on an equal footing. In his own words: My parents were foreigners from two different countries; they met in a third and started a family in New York. My sister and I read far more at home than in class. I went to high school on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, between the old Hebrew section, Little Italy and Chinatown. We had all kinds of friends. For us culture and difference meant fascination and discernment. My sister and I started travelling alone early. Before we were teenagers, we knew about exchange rates, visas and making friends far from home.

A deeply sensitive artist, Williams explored the tension between contained energy and boundless space. He paid tribute to oral traditions, unwritten histories, and identity while consistently avoiding mere evocation of the past in his work. He possessed an inimitable ability to unite color, light, and surface, pushing the boundaries of his aesthetic to create works of remarkable elegance and lyrical beauty. His modestly scaled drawings, focusing on mood and color, utilized grease pencil and oil sticks to build highly textured, waxy surfaces. He would then rub off parts of the top layers to reveal unforeseen chance effects, resulting in abstract, painterly pieces that draw on the inherent possibilities of his process. Although their visual impact is greatest from a distance, a closer look offers a rewarding experience and palpable sensations, evocative of the expansive possibilities of life and art.

Enos Williams was a versatile artist whose virtuosic ability to create exquisite forms drew from architecture and design. His process was physically and conceptually steeped in memory, history, and the passage of time. His sculpture and design work combined minimalist concepts with strong compositional organization, reflecting a subtle understanding of context and an awareness of the relationship between function and experimentation. By imbuing mundane materials, marks, and processes with surprising significance and intricate design, his work transformed into extraordinary visual poetry that evinced clarity of intent, allowing the viewer freedom of imagination, interpretation, and emotional response. Enos Williams traveled and exhibited his work widely both in the US and in Europe.

We extend our sincere gratitude to Sean Grandits, Masoud Ghandehari, and Nick Mellen for their generosity in lending their works to the exhibition.