OCHI is pleased to present Brian Wills, the artist’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery, on view in Los Angeles, California from January 15 through March 12, 2022. An Artist’s Reception will be held on Saturday, January 15th from 1:00 to 5:00 pm PST.

The exhibition features twelve new wall works intentionally placed throughout OCHI’s two Los Angeles galleries. Building upon the artist’s unique visual vocabulary of thread, paint, and wood, Wills’ new work evokes experiential understandings of line, color, space, and object as he aligns his practice with minimalist abstraction, the subversive history of the monochrome, California Light & Space, and other art historical paradigmatic shifts. Singular strands of thread are delicately wrapped around wooden substrates, eventually creating surfaces that appear to vibrate and shift depending on available light, thread density, the architecture of the panel, and the motion of the viewer.

In the largest gallery, individual works use a repeating color scheme—turquoise, red, yellow, and green threads wrapped around International Klein Blue-painted panels. One quadtych of deeply beveled panels appears to hover off the wall, supporting alternating layers of threads wrapped vertically or horizontally. While a single color plays the primary role per panel, adjacent colors appear to occupy the spaces between. Harnessing the notion of this perceived reflected color, Wills expands the composition beyond traditional dimensions.

The back gallery is an immersive installation in International Klein Blue. Co-invented by French artist Yves Klein in 1960, IKB uses a matte, synthetic resin binder that allows the suspended ultramarine pigment to maintain its aesthetic potency. A blue born of conceptualism, IKB’s super saturation was made to provoke perception. “To sense the soul, without explanation, without words, and to depict this situation,” Klein declared, “is what led me to monochrome painting.” In the center of each of Wills’ blue room panels is a small blue square, framed by thousands of colored threads that reflect light, create patterns with their layering, and cast shadows on their supports—as if a square could determine whether artworks have souls. “Abstract work should have a bit of a heartbeat,” says Wills, “with material, let’s say, having a voice.”

Wills is acutely aware of how a viewers’ brain will react to his work. The visual cortex interprets received visual data—color, motion, texture, and depth—precisely the fundamental properties that Wills engages. When exposed to pattern, the brain extrapolates as it habituates, for example when assuming that a vertical line of brown thread will repeat as it did thousands of times in a row—the works in OCHI Aux exemplify these principles. Deliberately skipped threads or a shift from warm to cool red thread are intended to reveal moments of intuition and intention, while indicating methods of construction. Expectations are constantly at play. Engaging with one’s own perception is always a gift, offering moments of joy, wonder, and self-reflection—in other words, investments in observation are rewarded handsomely.

Brian Wills (b. 1970, Lexington, KY) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received his BA from Denison University, his MA from Harvard University, and JD from Harvard Law School. Wills’ work has been exhibited at numerous venues including the Underground Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; TOTAH, New York, NY; Quint Gallery, La Jolla, CA; and OCHI, Sun Valley, ID and Los Angeles, CA. Wills' work is included in various public and private collections including The Jarl Mohn Family Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA; The Estee Lauder Collection, New York, NY; and Fundación / Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico.

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