Maxo,
2022
Intimacy sits at the center of this work. Two figures, rendered in gradients of black and violet, occupy a space that feels both domestic and staged. Their bodies rest in shadow against a jaundiced yellow wall that vibrates with artificial light. One turns toward a phone, the other outward, held between digital reflection and stillness. The composition advances the artist’s exploration of how the Black image is mediated and remade through screens, memory, and desire. The wall’s acidic glow acts as a visual interruption, flattening depth while amplifying the psychological tension of the moment. Above them, framed images gesture toward other bodies and past scenes, raising questions of who is watching and who is seen. By translating digitally altered photographs into painterly form, the work places these figures in a zone between pixel and flesh. It becomes a quiet study of care, spectatorship, and the shifting visibility of Black intimacy.
VAT included / excl. shipping.
Artwork is printed edge-to-edge. No white borders or framing are included.
Tyler Cala Williams (b. Trenton, New Jersey) is an American artist based between New York and Savannah. A graduate of Parsons, The New School (BFA Photography, 2020), Williams creates surreal self-portraiture and imagery charged by their community and culture, through using digital software like Photoshop to address appropriation in Western traditional art movements and the nuances of the subjugated Black.
Williams describes their practice as a process of remembering: memories that, like photographs, are both truth and construction. In their words, “I believe the surreal scenes I create are like the act of remembering. It looks far removed from reality because memories are never really fully truths. I believe memories are tricky and are like photos in their reliability. They are both representations of something. So for me, the dreamlike quality of my work is from my memories taking new forms.
