William Villalongo lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He was born in 1975 in Hollywood, FL and raised in the town of Bridgeton, NJ. Villalongo's work was first introduced to the public through his residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2004 and PS1Contemporary Art Center's Greater NY 2005 exhibition. His work has also been exhibited in the Studio Museum In Harlem's 2005 "Frequency" exhibition and El Museo del Barrio's fifth biennial: The (S) Files in 2007. He is the recipient of both the prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptor's Grant. His work is included in several notable collections including the Studio Museum In Harlem, El Museo Del Barrio and Princeton University Art Museum. His work has been reviewed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, The New Yorker and the New York Times. Villalongo is currently represented by Susan Inglett Gallery, NY.
I shamelessly rummage and appropriate iconic and not so iconic mass cultural imagery, with a base in African-American and American history and their respective vernacular. My goal is to orchestrate a conversation between history and art which could give us the progressive discussions of the future. I believe that our histories are metabolized, they mutate and are more alive in us when regarded as question. Social and cultural histories are in a constant cycle of being told and retold. The winners often claim authority, but the losers, lovers and haters must all have their say. I'm interested in this hazy space, in which the cry of many voices, melds the events of today into the mythologies of tomorrow, which somehow resemble the mythologies of yesterday.
I shamelessly rummage and appropriate iconic and not so iconic mass cultural imagery, with a base in African-American and American history and their respective vernacular. My goal is to orchestrate a conversation between history and art which could give us the progressive discussions of the future. I believe that our histories are metabolized, they mutate and are more alive in us when regarded as question. Social and cultural histories are in a constant cycle of being told and retold. The winners often claim authority, but the losers, lovers and haters must all have their say. I'm interested in this hazy space, in which the cry of many voices, melds the events of today into the mythologies of tomorrow, which somehow resemble the mythologies of yesterday.
