William Villalongo: Myths and Migrations
This exhibition presents 20 years of work by New York-based artist William Villalongo, including figural and narrative paintings, works on paper, and sculpture that incorporate flocking, cut paper, and collage. His practice is informed by research in the natural and social sciences, mythologies and folklore, popular culture imagery, and the history of art — particularly African objects and their appropriation in Euro-American art movements — exploring invisibility and revelation of Black presence against the backdrop of race. Bodies, objects, and interstitial spaces in Villalongo’s work help navigate ideas about seeing and being seen, while also connecting contemporary concepts of presence and erasure with their antecedents through time and across cultures.
William Villalongo is an assistant professor at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. In 2016, he co-curated Black Pulp!, a traveling exhibition of a collection of printed media produced by Black publishers, Black artists, and non-Black artists, with fellow artist Mark Thomas Gibson. Villalongo is a 2021 recipient of the Rome Prize in the visual arts, awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Denver Art Museum; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C; the Princeton University Art Museum; the Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others.
The artist received his B.F.A. from The Cooper Union School of Art, NYC, and his M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia.
Featured image: William Villalongo, Specimen, 2023. Stenciled linen pulp paint, black abaca, and collaged inkjet prints on black cotton base sheet, 21 in. dia. Grinnell College Museum of Art Collection.
