Willy Heeks | new works

April 4 - 27, 2019

Opening Reception: April 4, 6 - 8 pm

Willy Heeks’ new series of colorfully improvisational paintings vibrate with raw, gestural energy that balance intention with the subconscious impulse. Heeks creates a dazzling cacophony of images that reflect his interest in the constancy of modern day messaging and information.

The layered, strobe-like effect in these abstract paintings share a conceptual kinship with experimental filmmaker, Stan Brakhage. Heeks is inspired by the “closed-eye vision” experiments of Brakhage and the experience of seeing layered imagery when eyes are tightly shut. In his new series of works on paper and canvas, Heeks builds animated imagery with idiosyncratic combinations of line and color that simultaneously expand, recede and reverberate.

Willy Heeks has gained a national reputation, exhibiting in New York, Los Angeles and throughout the United States. He received his BFA from the University of Rhode Island in Kingston in 1973, attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program that same year and in 1977 he received his MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA. His work is included in the collections of Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA), Museum of Contemporary Art, (Detroit, MI), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, OH), the Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York), Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA).