Part for the Whole

This exhibition features configurations assembled by Jeff Williams, assistant professor of sculpture and extended media at the UT Austin Department of Art. The work utilizes materials from the library's extensive 28,000+ sample collection and seizes upon the artificiality of the prescribed function of these objects. Williams’ configurations bring attention to the particular physical qualities of each, making us look close. Using items from the collection, he juxtaposes materials that would otherwise not be seen together. The objects break beyond their product identities and are instead celebrated for their inherent qualities: flexibility, porosity, reflectivity, flatness, lightness, fuzziness, brightness - bringing us back, oddly enough, to what lends each of these objects their utility.

Williams received his MFA from Syracuse University in New York in 2002, and his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in 1998. He was a Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 2008 to 2009, an artist-in-residence in the Core Program at the Glassell School of Art of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston from 2006 to 2008. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Texas Prize.  

More images from the VRC>>