May 02 2024 65 mins
On Season 5, Episode 2, of The Art Career Podcast, Emily sits down with painter, Robin F. Williams, in their Greenpoint, Brooklyn studio.
Known for her large-scale paintings of stylized, sentient, yet ambiguously generated female figures, Robin F. Williams (b. 1984) employs a variety of techniques, including oil, airbrush, poured paint, marbling, and staining of raw canvas to create deeply textured and complexly constructed paintings. Combining a masterful technical understanding with an innate sense of curiosity, Williams fuses practices from social media channels such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube with references to early modernism, pop culture, advertising, and cinema, to challenge the systemic conventions around representations of women. Williams received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has presented solo exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA; Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA; Jack the Pelican Presents, Brooklyn, NY; and Morán Morán, Mexico City, Mexico. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally including In New York, Thinking of You (Part I), Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY; I’m Not Your Mother, P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Fire Figure Fantasy, ICA Miami, Miami, FL; Present Generations, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Bitter Nest, Galerie Perrotin, Tokyo, Japan; XENIA: Crossroads in Portrait Painting, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; Nicolas Party: Pastel, Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY; SEED, curated by Yvonne Force, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY; and more. Her work is currently in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Collection Majudia, Montreal, Canada; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; X Museum, Beijing, China; among others. Robin F. Williams: We’ve Been Expecting You, Williams’ first solo institutional exhibition, is on view at the Columbus Museum of Art through August 18, 2024. Her first solo exhibition with Perrotin Tokyo opens in May 2024.