Normal, IL
Sharp angles puncture. Michael Wille’s trio of small abstract paintings, titled “Echo Hill” and “Front Street” for the studios in which they were scrupulously crafted, contain dozens of triangles, many of them honed enough to hurt. But not all. Some are squared off at the tip into parallelograms. Wille, who paints as much with an X-acto knife as with an aerosol can, tape or a brush, has multiple means of blunting the shapes that fill his canvases. Noticing these forms and the impenetrable dozens or even hundreds more beneath and atop them is part of the point—and the pleasure—of looking. The muddled edges of Wille’s paintings, which in their layers and drips exceed the canvas in both directions, concur. Can’t find something worth gazing at, and then something else, and then something more? Boring is on you.
—Lori Waxman 3/24/16 1:33PM