15 Sep: Scott Williams Home Invasion (SF, CA)
Home Invasion
Scott Williams
September 15 - Oct 20, 2012
6pm to 8pm
This fall, Steven Wolf Fine Arts will recreate the studio interior of painter Scott Williams, best known to San Franciscans as an early aerosol street artist who painted murals, cars and interiors using a spray can and stencils. His primary media though, since 2000, when he exchanged spray can for airbrush, is canvas, wood, and books. Williams cinematic, stencil montages take the form of landscapes, rock posters, political propaganda and various forms of abstraction. Literature, punk flyers, Asian woodcuts and obscure comic books are among his many sources.
One of his most intriguing creations is the interior of the Victorian Mission flat that he has lived in for the past 25 years. The residence, studio and gallery is a mixture of wall stencils, decay and paintings that hang on the wainscoting and stack on the floor like sloppy layer cakes. The space is a link to an era of San Francisco studios that flourished before skyrocketing rents, gentrification and the evolution of live/work spaces into generic corporate interiors. His capacity to achieve a painterly looseness with stencils, and his tendency to work flat on the ground in the manner of the abstract expressionists mirrors that link to the past. The installation will include paintings from every stage of Williams' career, new stencils made directly on the wall, and fragments of the studio itself.
