Higher Pictures, New York is hosting an exhibition of the works of artist D’Angelo Lovell Williams, on view through August 11, 2017.

The show presents new works by New York-based artist D’Angelo Lovell Williams (b. 1992), marking his first solo at the gallery as well as New York. The artist earned his BFA from Memphis College of Art in 2015 and is currently an MFA candidate at Syracuse University. His recent solo presentations include an exhibition at Spark Contemporary Art Space, Syracuse (2016) and Beauty Kings (2015), SALTQuarters Gallery, Syracuse. On view are his self-portraits, in which Williams creates painterly tableaux characterized by meticulous attention to texture, pattern, color, and composition.

The scenes are achingly intimate, pulsing with energy and power generated by interweaving the sensuous and the political, complicated by radical gestures. For example, in one of the images, the artist’s figure appears from the neck down, with the body shrouded in a shirt and a cape that is worn like a skirt, and his veined hand pulling up the cape to reveal his bare legs, spread slightly, while his fingers resting gently between them. In another, the artist and a man are seen kissing through the fabric of black do-rags that, worn backwards, completely veil their faces. These works testify Williams’ vision through his lens with visibility and vulnerability, insisting on an alternative pictorial and societal narrative in which Blackness and queerness are dominant, authorial voices.