Can race and color be separated? Deeply concerned with how color shapes our world, Chicago-based architect and artist Amanda Williams has long addressed this issue in her practice. Williams’ continued fascination with color is rooted in a quest to discover the possibilities and limits of racialized readings – both theoretical and real – of color.

Titled “CANDYLADYBLACK,” Williams’ new solo exhibition at Gagosian’s Park & ​​75 on New York’s Upper East Side features new works in her ongoing “What Black Is This, You Say?” (2020–). The show draws on an old memory. “When I was growing up in Chicago,” Williams said ART news in a pre-show presentation, which runs until July 8. “It was very important to go see the candy lady, especially in the summer.” She added: “There was a kind of mystique about it all.”

Curated by Gagosian director Antwaun Sargeant, the exhibition features nine paintings that extend his research into a better understanding of color, as an organizing principle of his art, as a means of identity, and much more. The exhibition is a joyful, synesthetic experience characterized by ups and downs of paint in rich hues – reds, greens, etc. – which resemble the sweet surfaces of confectionery.

Working in the tradition of gestural abstraction, Williams uses a restrained color palette of nine shades drawn from classic candies, in particular her two favorites, Jolly Ranchers and Now and Laters. To create these unique candy shades, she conducted extensive and meticulous research to understand how these candies would react when melted and dehydrated. The final selections were then translated into paint pigments that so closely resemble hard cherry candy or green apple lollipops that you can almost taste the paints.

This sensory element is crucial for the visual experience. “I think a real triumph in these abstract works,” said Sargeant ART news“It’s not only that they are related to memory, but also to the sense of taste and how tastes can serve as a means of evoking memory. The memory of these colors has done something in your mind that brings you back to a green apple lollipop.

Sargent and Williams’ relationship began about seven years ago when they connected on the artist’s breakout series, “Color(ed) Theory.” For the project, which is documented in a series of inkjet prints, Williams painted homes in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood that were slated for demolition in a range of monochromatic colors associated with black culture. Williams invited Sargent to visit the street where these houses actually stood. He ended up helping out with a few final coats of paint.

“I felt like no one was doing anything to intervene or bring attention to the demise of, and I mean literally, our community,” said Sargent, who is also a Chicago native. “Amanda was able to do this in a way that marked the community with our memory, and with moments that weren’t about breaking down or burning, but really joyful moments.”

Last year, Sargent included one of Williams’ paintings from the series in “Social Works II” which was exhibited at the gallery’s Grosvenor Hill space in London last fall. That’s the title—What black is it, you say? – “Although rarely recognized as such, ‘The Candy Lady’ and her ‘Candy Store’ provided one of your earliest examples of black business, cooperative economics, black female CEOs and good customer service” – black ( 24.07.20)— recalls the Candy Lady who inspired the show’s title.

Williams began “What Black Is This, You Say?” somewhat in response to the #BlackoutTuesday social media protest campaign, in which Instagram users posted black squares in an act of support for the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of of Minneapolis police officers in May 2020.

Williams’ project aimed to challenge the use of the black square to represent a monolith of Darkness. She wrote in the first instagram series post“I’ll be honest. I didn’t smell black. I hate that stuff, but I gave in. I wanted to be supportive. But color is everything to me. You can’t just say ‘black’…which one “So I’m going to usher in a different black every day until I don’t feel like it anymore. Why? Because I’m black and I can!”

In five months, she posted more than 120 shades and textures of black on her Instagram account, each with a caption. The captions, like many of the artist’s artwork titles, are full of vernaculars and “insiders” that signify specific black experiences. Williams further highlights the multiplicity of blackness by creating sentences in which readability differs across generations, geography, and class.

For instance, a message caption reads:

What is this black, you say?
“You have a hard head AND a soft head at the same time” – noir.

The series has inspired many, such as artist Alfredo Jaar, who remembers seeing “What Black Is This, You Say?” activated on the Storefront for Art and Architecture facade in Soho, a corner he walks through almost every day. He was immediately struck by the work and included the work of Williams, Free Body Diagram (Black) (2020), in an exhibition of which he was the curator and which is currently presented at the Galerie Lelong, entitled “The temptation to exist”. (Williams’ work is also featured in a group exhibition curated by fashion designer Duro Olowu at Cooper Hewitt in New York as part of his “Selects” series.)

“In my current exhibition, I have created a space of uncertainty and loss that reflects the times we live in,” Jaar said in an email. “As a counterpoint, I also offer a space of poetic resistance, a space of joy and hope. It is inhabited by more than 75 artists, including Amanda Williams. I felt she had to be there.

For his new paintings at Gagosian, Williams said she was also interested in exploring how she could use materials that could reflect on notions of value. The four smaller-scale works are embellished with a single shoulder pad, which Williams says reflects her analysis of black women’s relationship to work, the economy, and American business.

“I was starting to think about what was going on in the economy that would force the candy seller to sell candy out of her home rather than have a job at a company,” Williams said. “I was thinking about the entry of women into the labor market in the 80 years and the female CEO, and all that shoulder pad narrative.

Additionally, several of the gallery’s otherwise white walls are covered with a layer of gold leaf, a material that Williams has used in his previous work, It’s a gold mine / is the gold mine? (2016-17).

“I thought, ‘How do you make sure you’re not being too one-dimensional in your readings of these things by making it look like you’re just letting candy melt on a canvas? said Williams, adding, “Or is that a full release? ? That you don’t have to do some justification or force some kind of storytelling on pure abstraction? Could it just be having the freedom as a black person to abstract? And is it enough to be valued for it?

Of course, there are endless answers to Williams’ questions and the question posed by the series title “What Black Is This, You Say?” After all, black is unlimited.