In order to penetrate the work of Brian Wills lets back up to the years leading up to Wills’ frontal assault in to life as a painter. Historically for instance, when an artist like Robert Irwin began plotting his artistic course, the work began in the studio. Messy albeit beautiful Abstract Expressionist canvases gave way to the Line Paintings, sub-lime studies of the eye’s ability to discern the slight movement of a horizontal line on a atmo-spheric background; the steady hand, nonetheless, ever pres-ent. These works lead in to the Dot Paintings, convex canvases painstakingly saturated with optically charged red and green micro-dots across the canvas. Then the Disks, metal or plexi concave disks hovering a few inches from the wall competing with the moon in their majesty. From there the object disap-pears all together, an empty gallery with an almost invisible intervention of scrim; a fluid and seemingly effortlessly measured path from one body of work to the next. All the work took place in the studio.The studio is not where Wills’ began his molt-ing process to arrive at these enchanted illuminated fields of motionless liquid. His artistic journey began in the throws of his former career as talent

manager, his canvas, a Roman vomitorium of Hollywood egos and excess. Wills, el maestro, glibly conducted this band of wreckage into cacophonous symphony in at least the ears of this community. In the peak of his success, Wills invited me to his studio / garage with the promise of a revelation.

He informed me that he was abruptly leaving this world to pursue being a painter. He flung open the doors and I was confronted with the visual equivalent of the world he was exiting; paintings attacked by a man on a mission, earnest, energetic, charismatic even, human in their vulnerability and ultimately brash. Then began / continued the elimina-tion process at an accelerated pace. The way the seduction of the “important” gesture gives way to the hangover of feelings that this mode of creation weighed down by his-tory, becomes garish and self-indulgent, the artist begins a purging process, eliminating all but the bare essentials; the mission, identifying what those essentials are. First giv-ing up the paint brush, Wills began to use unconventional materials as his primary mark making tool. Dental floss, vinyl

tape and string are used to painstakingly layered con-structions that seem to be in constant flux. At the heart of the work is the artist’s interest in optics and the way the brain registers color, movement and spatial relationships. As the eye is drawn across the lines that argue and agree, the illu-sion of movement and depth is induced as perception is altered. When viewed from a distance, surfaces morph into shimmering fields of color hovering in an unidentifiable space. The work displays an obsessive dedication to pro-cess. The paintings’ intense detail, repetition and variation evoke a meditation on the act of production.

In loosening the composition in this newest body of work, Wills’ has ultimately arrived at a visual language that embraces the legacy of the minimalists ideol-ogy indigenous to Southern California, even tracking a tran-sition from the expressionistic to clinging only to the ingredi-ents that support the ephem-eral realization of beauty. These Californians unlike East Coast dogma, don’t apologize for beauty, but celebrate it.Wills’ formal structures literally are held together by thread—

colored thread, that double as modernist composition; grids, zips, horizons. Wills’ surfaces, similar to John McCracken, are a complex layered cake of var-nishes and pigments encasing the threads that form his com-positions all built up through a laborious process of sanding and building back up. The nar-cissist could easily be dis-tracted by their reflection in his vibrant pallet, one’s complexion basked in infra reds and blues. Wills’ most radical, almost sub-versive work removes the back-ground of pigment to let the intrinsic beauty of the grain and tint of wood work its alchemy; the discreet pigment of thread a quiet ocular transformation of the field of timber. Wills is a graduate of Denison and Har-vard Universities. His work has been included in numerous ex-hibitions in the US and abroad. Recent shows include Swell Art 1950-2010, Metro Pictures, Nyehaus, Friedrich Petzel,NY, String Theory, The Happy Lion, Los Angeles, Themes and Variations at the Tor-rance Art Museum, CA, Made in California, Selected Works from the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, Los Angeles, and Consequence at Museum 52 in London. Brian Wills lives and works in Los Angeles.

Untitled2010Oil, rayon thread, linear polyurethane on wood panel24 x 96 x 1.75 in.(61 x 243.8 x 4.4 cm)

Untitled (Birch Wood) 2010

Rayon thread and linear polyurethane on wood

24 x 96 in. (61 x 243.8 cm)

Untitled (Five Flavors) 2010 Enamel, rayon thread, linear polyurethane on wood 36 x 48 in. (91.4 x 121.9 cm)

Untitled (Peacock Blue) 2009

Enamel, rayon thread, linear polyurethane on wood

24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm)

Untitled (Vermillion Red) 2010 Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood 24 x 48 in. (61 x 121.9 cm)

Untitled (Pale Green) 2010

Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood

24 x 36 in. (61 x 91.4 cm)

Untitled (White Plaid) 2010 Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood 36 x 36 in. (91.4 x 91.4 cm)

Untitled (Red #2) 2010

Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood

48 x 72 in. (121.9 x 182.9 cm)

Untitled (Birch Wood #2) 2010 Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood 60 x 48 in. (152.4 x 121.9 cm)

Untitled (Tiger Wood) 2010

Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood

24 x 48 in. (61 x 121.9 cm)

Untitled (Navy Blue) 2010 Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood 24 x 48 in. (61 x 121.9 cm)

Untitled (Red, Blue Grid) 2010

Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood

24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm)

Untitled (Graph Grid) 2009 Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood 16 x 16 in. (40.6 x 40.6 cm)

Untitled 2010

Rayon thread, enamel, and linear polyurethane on wood

48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm)

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