By documenting, deconstructing, and re-composing visual elements of the city, I give form to dissonance within the urban geography. The use of photography in my work is cumulative; I use archival and current self-generated images to build large-scale collage-type forms. My site-specific compositions work around, through, and over shape, searching for the moment when the initial form “falls off”. By creating pathways that activate passive or overlooked elements within a space, I direct the viewer to engage with it in its entirety. My constructions encourage the use of photography not as a tool to stop time, but instead to control the flow of time passing. At its core my work is an amalgamation of traditional photographic languages and a syntax belonging to the twentieth-century sculptural tradition.

I am fascinated with the organic and idiosyncratic architectural transformations evident on a macro and micro level within urban environments, specifically New York City. Identifying and commenting upon the metamorphosis of space/place due to the renewal/disinvestment of inner-city areas is a driving force behind my work. As a twenty-year resident of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I’ve experienced firsthand the speed and degree to which an area can transform yet retain elements of its former identities. To better understand the complexities of this city, one must accept, as Rem Koolhaas states in his book Delirious New York, “New York is a city that will be replaced by another city…Not only are large parts of its surface occupied by architectural mutations, utopian fragments, and irrational phenomena, but in addition each block is covered with several layers of phantom architecture in the form of past occupancies, aborted projects and popular fantasies that provide alternative images to the New York that exists.”


Bio:

Jennifer Williams holds an MFA from Goldsmiths College in London and a BFA from The Cooper Union in New York City. Born and raised in rural SW Pennsylvania, Williams moved to New York to 1990. Over the last twenty years, she has made the visual exploration of New York a central theme in her collage and photographic work. Notable solo and two person shows include: A.I.R. Gallery, The Homefront Gallery, and La Mama Gallery in New York, NY, Brown University in Providence, RI, and Silvereye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, PA. Large scale works have been featured in the DUMBO Arts Festival, the HOWL! Festival, and the Affordable Art Fair in New York, NY, as well as the group show “CONSTRUCT” in Philadelpia, PA. She is currently a 2011-2013 Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA) Fellow, as well as a former 2008-2009 A.I.R. Gallery Fellow. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker Photo Blog, Afterimage Magazine, Photographic Quarterly, and the book “A Stuck Up Piece of Crap: A Selected History of Stickers” (Rizzoli). She was recently awarded a NARS Foundation International Artist Residency Program Studio in Brooklyn, NY for the 2011 season and will be participating in the Philadelphia Open Studios in conjunction with CFEVA in the fall.