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TEXTS

ARMANDO WILLIAMS. OUT OF PLACE. ANTHOLOGY (1979-2020)

Written by Miguel A. López*

The recent history of Peru beats intensely in the work of Armando Williams. Since 1979, his graphic and pictorial work has been dedicated to taking the pulse of some of the most significant transformations in the country. Exploring mainly the language of abstraction, Williams has crystallized a highly complex body of work that seeks to speak to the immediate social environment and that moves seductively between poetic speculation and political concern.


Williams emerged as part of an effervescent scene of young artists and art collectives that, in the late 1970s, reclaimed public space and introduced new urgencies into the local artistic debate. After being part of the EPS Huayco group (1980-1981), Williams traveled to New York in 1984 where he studied and lived for thirteen years. His return to Peru in 1996 meant resuming some reflections that he had tried out in the previous decade, expanding his research with engraving and painting, but also sporadically dedicating himself to curating and cultural management. Armando Williams. Out of Site: Anthology (1979-2020) presents nearly seventy pieces that retrospectively review four decades of his work. This gathering of moments reviews various paths and concerns about territory, movement, disappearance, the body, the environment, history, as well as other ways of imagining and representing the subject. This exhibition is divided into four cores: spectrum and trace; thread and knot; landscape and nature; and huaco and mummy. Seen in perspective, Williams' practice seems to return again and again to the question about the communication possibilities of painting. In 1997, the artist stated: “It is always more useful to relate to the work not by asking 'What does it mean?', but better yet, 'How does it mean?', a question that also points out issues concerning form and not content, style and not substance.” Perhaps for this reason the recurrence of threads, fabrics, knots and roots as a way of structuring the base of his paintings is not surprising, seeking in these signs the remnants of a communication that precedes written or alphabetical language. This aesthetic and ethical positioning in relation to creative work also makes it difficult to establish hierarchies between his works, since the pieces always appear as events interrelated with each other, like the weaves of a textile or like the constant flow of a river. His work moves between suggestion and pointing, between introspection and social desire, between abstract gestures and the veracity of natural patterns. From this indeterminate but deeply affective space, Williams has generated powerful statements that raise the question of our place in time and history.

* Curator of the exhibition "Armando de Williams. Out of Site. Anthology (1979-2024).

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