Plus Gallery welcomes William Betts back for "Remote Sensing," an exhibition of new surveillance themed paintings that have become the focal point of the artist's concern. It has been five years since Betts last properly exhibited his work in Denver, his 2007 solo exhibition "Vertigo" substantially building on the promise that led him to be the most successful artist in the early years of the gallery history. Since that time his accomplishments have been substantial and uncommon for any emerging artist in the United States, built through a network of leading art dealers in diverse markets throughout the North American continent. His use of technology in painting is profound, his practice merging a wide variety of historically relevant themes with continual societal shifts that touch everyone's lives. Time has only pronounced his merits, grounding his practice and propelling Betts forward into a category that is singular throughout contemporary art in the world today.
There are many layers to William's work that must be considered when confronting his forward thinking trajectory. The first is his proprietary interface of computer software used in the determination and creation of his paintings. Adapted to machinery designed by the artist as a provocative way to move past traditional approaches to image making, Betts' prior experience in the commercial business sector provided him with the knowledge and experience to confidently emerge into the increasingly competitive art arena of the 21st century. His line-paintings pushed the limits of how paint can be applied to canvas, delivering exacting micro-detailing that the artist knew to be impossible to create by hand. With the works immediately finding an audience, Betts continued to lengthen the path of the "impossible" with a series of moire paintings that were hallucinatory to confront in person, further amplifying the singular attributes of his apparatus and ideas. The only thing missing from the artist's first two bodies of work was a context that had human implications, something Betts quickly discovered as a result of tragedy in the modern world.
William introduced his "Surveillance" series of paintings in 2006, his direct response to the London bombings that rocked the UK, where he lived in 2002. Betts was keenly aware of the British government's elaborate and controversial surveillance system which they pointed to as a deterrent to a terrorist incident. He was fascinated by the surveillance images that emerged after the bombings and what they represented in our modern world. Since that time, Betts adaptation of surveillance imagery have been impressively expansive, tapping a realm that by it's very nature defines and defies reality. Early works depicted images of remote highways, culled from actual continuous camera footage the artist contracted with the state of Texas to utilize, a remarkable feat in itself. Overhead city views touched on the rapidly evolving swath cut by Google in it's ambitious program to leave no location on the earth out of reach by the click of a mouse.
Betts further pushed the psychological factors inherent in such imagery, making statements that only an artist can propose as he defined through his titles certain locations depicted form overhead as neighborhoods where a pedophile resides, pairing the coordinates of a police profile with the corresponding satellite imagery. Further forays into the more extreme examples of surveillance brought him into hotel bedrooms, depicting supposed "johns" preparing to engage in illicit behavior with what most obviously appeared to be prostitutes. Because these works were composed of dots to simulate pixelated photos - with any level of distinct clarity coming through only at a great distant - there was no way to conceivably know the actual origin or truth within the photo. It was through this ongoing pursuit and expansion of boundaries that has propelled the intellectual and visual implications of Betts' work into a new, remarkably poignant direction that is beyond compare.
The group of paintings that William Betts has culled for "Remote Sensing" further expands his efforts to, as he calls it, "carefully isolate, manipulate and corrupt specific aspects of the process to create images." His current subjects strike an uncanny balance between the known and the imagined, conveying an ambiguity that is a direct and more refined result of his desire to allow the viewer to determine their own position when confronted by his work, rather than forcing a specific commentary. Several images depict commercial airplanes that suggest an unusual vantage point for a regular commuter, the composition carefully selected and transposed to question our perception. According to William, "Airliners and airports represent the ideal subject for an investigation into the nature of surveillance; airports are our literally our culture's crossroads and airliners have a conflicting history representing escape and threat concurrently." The layers of mediation within this work are critical to him, as the removal and distance from this remote viewpoint is analogous to how we experience so much of life today.
Another grouping of images suggest crowds, the artists showing an unusual balance between abstraction, playfulness and a current social reality that is pervasive in so many ways it literally boggles the mind, his careful selection of frame and manipulation of the colors building an ambiguity that is simply spectacular. The final, and perhaps most unsettling set of paintings, depict office environments as seen from outside, suggesting a voyeurism that knows no boundaries or motive. The imagery suggests the context of high-rise settings, where the vantage point could be as close as the next building or from a snipers viewpoint from a strategic location. Without any degree of specificity, and certainly some suggestion of isolation as well as camaraderie, the images leave us uncertain of who might be watching us at any time and why.
"Remote Sensing" comes at a watershed moment in William Betts' career. Though he has received numerous regional accolades and awards in recent years, his constant presence in New American Paintings since his emergence in 2004 led to that publication awarding the artist their Annual Prize for a distinguished painter in January of this year, by a distinguished jury consisting of Bill Arning, Director, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, James Rondeau, Curator and Chair of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Peter Boswell, Senior Curator, Miami Art Museum. And perhaps more telling is Betts' first inclusion this May in the the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart's major exhibition "Tracing the Grid," combining his work with some of the most prestigious contemporary artists in the world today. It's a trajectory that's not unwarranted, and one that Betts' has worked hard to craft through ingenuity and an innate understanding of how to be historically relevant in the world of art.
Plus Gallery will open "Remote Sensing" on Thursday, April 19th with a reception for William Betts from 6-8pm.
