Ochi Gallery is pleased to present Five Decades of William T. Wiley at 119 Lewis Street.  The show will run June 20 – January 3, 2012 with an artist reception and concert August 6, 2011.

Five Decades of William T. Wiley is a compilation of works in response to What’s It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect, originated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2009-10.

The world filtered through the eyes of William Wiley is full of puns, jokes, enigmatic texts, warnings of doom, questions, and cartoons.  Wiley witnesses our shared cultural condition through his personal vision, creating a unique iconography that is candid, humorous, and intelligent.  In this overarching look at his work, the show focuses his long integration of text and image in various materials.  Although Wiley’s work evades categorization, his characters (“companions”), combined with his ability to work in many mediums while maintaining his sense of humor are marked Wiley traits.

Spanning several decades, Wiley’s body of work explores the zeitgeist of times past and present while operating critically on multiple levels.  Columbus Rerouted, 1961 records Wiley’s personal experience of having to change his route to school as a student at the San Francisco Art Institute.  The piece also begs the question of what would have happened if Christopher Columbus had detoured back in 1491.  Mickey and Walt at the Vault, 2000 references the allegation that Walt Disney had his body cryogenically frozen, but also seems to allude that creativity can be a form of immortality.

A prismatic look back at Wiley’s work over the past fifty years is a look back at the world over this period. While faceted with Wiley’s idiosyncratic responses and personal jokes, it is a starkly honest, uniquely sincere portrayal of the global and moral climate.