THIERRY GOLDBERG PROJECTS is proud to present NO MELODY HARDER, paintings by Allison Katz and Jessica Williams. Both artists share a propensity to explore meaning through a sharp personal syntax. In this manner, they align themselves with the tradition of Gertrude Stein and her commitment to an astute and off center presentation of the familiar.

“Dirt and not copper makes the color darker. It makes the shape so heavy and makes no melody harder.”—Gertrude Stein, “DIRT AND NOT COPPER,” Tender Buttons

Allison Katz’s suite of paintings reference a portrait by Jean-Baptiste Corot from 1866. The painting titled Agostina is in the collection of The National Gallery in Washington DC. Reproducing the portrait with each painting, Katz creates a ground upon which she can connect and respond to psychologically. In turn, she overwrites Agostina with her own psyche in an effort to become Agostina.

Jessica Williams’ work takes this position in terms of “open and closed identities.” Her work marks a point where the artist’s gaze is an active dialogue between surface reality and internal reality. In this sense, she intertwines, both loosely and tightly, her own remembering and recording to the subject at hand creating thick psychic and irreverent moments.

Katz and Williams’ work is characteristic of the paroxysm of the daydream and notion, which keeps the work fresh, fast, and reflective with no regrets. They push forward and further in looking to embolden and enliven their response. In giving meaning, Katz and Williams have traditional yet open relationships to their subjects. The strength of their work lies in the dedication to figuration and observation while allowing themselves to be drawn past the surface of those representations. Their willingness and susceptibility to diversion in memory, metaphor, and symbolism is evidence of the resilience of poetic thought. These digressions in observation stand as moments of lyrical reflection as well as a kind of interference in the act of looking. Thus questioning focus, their gaze is a play between exteriors and internal murmurs gathering into an arresting poetic attention deficit disorder in which no melody is harder.

Allison Katz was born in Montreal, Canada where she received a BFA from Concordia University. She has exhibited her work in Canada, and is the recipient of the 2004 Brucebo residency program on Gotland Island in the Swedish Baltic. In the fall, she will be entering her second year MFA at Columbia University, New York.

Jessica Williams received her BFA in 2005 from the Rhode Island School of Design, and is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She has exhibited at The Peanut Gallery, Easthampton, MA, the Williams Building, Los Angeles, CA, and Roots+Culture, Chicago, IL. Her work will also be featured in Fake Space at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art in September.