Installation view of Brittney Leeanne Williams at The Armory Show, New York, NY (September 5-7, 2025 / VIP Preview — September 4, 2025).
Javits Center, 429 11th Ave, New York, NY, Booth P01
September 5-7, 2025 (VIP Preview — September 4, 2025)
Alexander Berggruen is pleased to present new paintings by Brittney Leeanne Williams at The Armory Show 2025.
Show Dates & Times
Thursday, September 4, 2025: VIP Preview, 11 am-8 pm
Friday, September 5, 2025: 11 am–7 pm
Saturday, September 6, 2025: 11 am–7 pm
Sunday, September 7, 2025: 11 am–6 pm
Location
Booth P01
Javits Center
429 11th Ave
New York, NY 10001
For additional information and images, please contact the gallery at info@alexanderberggruen.com. You can also find more information about the fair on The Armory Show website.
Brittney Leeanne Williams
The Body Is an Eye, 2025
oil on canvas
48 x 38 in. (121.9 x 96.5 cm.)
Speaking about her work in this exhibition, the artist stated:
My work explores the body as a site of transcendence, memorialization, suffering, and as a liminal device to the mystical. While my paintings are often figurative, my concerns are conceptual as I grapple with the articulation of the body as both subject and object, engaging ideas of presence and absence. In addition, the body, natural world and architecture often blend and reflect each other in my work. I use the color red–symbolic of a signal–to speak to the Black experience, frequently centering a red Black body as the starting place for a painting.
This exhibition represents two strands in my current work. First, I draw on biblical genre paintings of angelic visitation and revelation. In reimagining these tableaux, I often redact the angel or other biblical figure while emphasizing the materiality of drapery as a trace of their presence. Rather than the revelator appearing in human form, the angelic figure is absent, only suggested by their vacated robes. They are stripped of a figure yet are still present. One of these paintings continues my Interruption series, which riffs on neo-classical figurations of statuary and drapery. The interruption depicted in this canvas operates on the level of the picture plane and thematically, as the figures are disrupted by unseen revelations. The drapes in this image complicate the relationship between the figure and ground, foreground and background.
In addition, some of the works in this exhibition operate like talismans or icons. I think of these paintings as aspiring to the power that Simon Critchley ascribes to medieval Christian symbols: “Devotional objects and images impel the attentive viewer to both see the literal thing in front of them and to see beyond. To see both at once.” (Simon Critchley, Mysticism). Again, drapery floats, suggesting an unseen form. The image of the eye that occasionally appears here, sometimes projecting out from a praying form, sometimes framing a ritual token, is a gesture of seeing while being seen. The occasional submissive yet entreating body becomes the source of vision. Activating these eyes evokes being witnessed by the art object, thus evoking the feeling that they themselves see.
Brittney Leeanne Williams
Interruption 8: Integration, 2025
oil on canvas
60 x 40 in. (152.4 x 101.6 cm.)
Brittney Leeanne Williams in the studio, Los Angeles, CA, 2025. Photo: Cassandra Isbell
This solo booth follows the gallery’s two solo shows with the artist Brittney Leeanne Williams: Huddle (November 30, 2023-January 10, 2024) and Brittney Leeanne Williams: The Arch Is a Portal Is a Belly Is a Back (March 5-April 14, 2021). Williams was included in the gallery’s booth at FOG Design+Art (January 19-23, 2022) and in the group shows The Natural World: Part II (March 9-April 13, 2022) and Quarters: Anne Buckwalter, Dustin Hodges, JJ Manford, Brittney Leeanne Williams (March 18-May 27, 2020).
Brittney Leeanne Williams (b. 1990, Pasadena, CA) explores the body as a site of transcendence, memorialization, suffering, and as a liminal device to the mystical. While her paintings are often figurative, her concerns are conceptual as she grapples with the articulation of the body as both subject and object, engaging ideas of presence and absence. The body, natural world, and architecture often blend and reflect each other in her work. She uses the color red—symbolic of a signal—to speak to the Black experience, frequently centering a red Black body as the starting place for a painting.
Williams has been featured in exhibitions at Alexander Berggruen, New York, NY; The Hole, New York, NY; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Monique Meloche, Chicago, IL; Mamoth, London, UK; Carl Kostyál, Milan, IT and Stockholm, SE; Para Site, Hong Kong, CN; Galerie Droste, Paris, FR; Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, GE; Newchild, Antwerp, BE; Collaborations, Copenhagen, DK; and at institutions such as Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), San Francisco, CA; and Telfair Museums, Savannah, GA; among others. Her work is represented in various public collections, including the Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA; the Domus Collection, New York, NY and Beijing, CN; HE Art Museum (HEM), CN; Fundacion Medianoche0, Granada, ES; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. She is a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant recipient. Williams’s artist residencies include Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist-in-Residence; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; the Fores Project, UK; Arts + Public Life; and McColl Center. Alexander Berggruen represents the artist.
For additional information and images, please contact the gallery at info@alexanderberggruen.com. You can also find more information about the fair on The Armory Show website.
Brittney Leeanne Williams
Eye on an Angel 3, 2025
oil on canvas
16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm.)
Red is a difficult color. Beloved by collectors of the more thuggish variety, many painters avoid it because it’s too dominant. Brittney Leeanne Williams doesn’t fight the red’s power, opting to mitigate it with trompe l’oeil. Her folds are so realistic that when you first approach it, you don’t even think of it as surreal. You see the rocks, the clothes and the reflections, and your brain registers this life-sized silhouette as a person. This is a dramatic and cinematic work without any faces in it. It’s suggestive of the cover of a romance novel from the 1990s, or perhaps a stained glass window. The robe does seem like something Jesus would wear, and the light source does seem to suggest that it’s coming from the non-existent head. It’s appealing how dark and shiny this work becomes near the bottom. It seems to suggest that this work could be many different ways, if it wanted to be.
