Jeff Williams, Pennyroyal drawing (cave), 2020

Roundabouts Now is beyond thrilled to present Liquefier, a two person exhibition that finds Meg Lipke and Jeff Williams in the same cave. Liquefier invites viewers to journey through time into a new space where stalactites and stalagmites are evidence of studio practice and mark making has evolved from ancient techniques. Williams arrives from the basement caves of Midwestern homes, by way of cave systems in Central Texas, while Lipke visits ancient rock carvings and dwelling sites in the UK and France and reimagines the deep past through a feminist lens. Current and ancient neanderthals have been studied and imagined in this process.

Lipke, a painter, pushes the formal boundaries of what a painting can be by giving it a soft body, eschewing the traditional rigid supports and thereby melting its expected rectilinearity into stuffed canvas forms. Recently, her brightly hued mark making technique has become more codified thanks to her investigations into pictographs and aerial mapping of elements of interest in archaeological sites, especially the more recently discovered neanderthal caves in Bruniquel, France. Images found on the walls of the caves and the arrangements of stalagmites have asserted a particular importance within her library of marks.

Williams is a sculptor who often includes video, photography, and drawing in his installations. He has been spending time in a series of cave structures frequented by rock climbers near Austin, TX. Through his welded sculptures, he speaks fluently about material culture and global value systems. For Liquefier, functional and decorative aluminum objects are transformed through the application of heat–fused, melted, cut, and re-formed through casting–suspended from the ceiling or spiraling up from the floor. 

Liquefier will be accompanied by an editioned print from each artist in collaboration with Kingston’s local 1080press. Meg Lipke’s print Bruniquel Map is a rendering of the human-assisted stalactite formations found in Bruniquel. Jeff Williams presents Pennyroyal Drawing (cave), a drawing he created from hiking in caves around Mt. Washington, MA.

Jeff Williams lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Austin, TX. Williams has been awarded multiple residencies including the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France; the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA; and the Core Program through the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. He was the 2009 Leonore Annenberg Fellow in the Arts at the American Academy in Rome.

Solo exhibitions include Jack Hanley Gallery in New York, NY; Co-Lab Projects in Austin, TX; RAIR in Philadelphia, PA; Arthouse in Austin, TX; and Artpace in San Antonio, TX. Group exhibitions include Jack Hanley Gallery; NADA on Governors Island, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; and Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin, TX. His work has been featured in articles and reviews in The New York Times, Art in America, Art Papers, Shifter Magazine, and Hyperallergic.

Meg Lipke is known for her sculptural sewn canvases as well as her paintings with one rounded corner. She engages such elements as the body, the frame and the grid while also giving works volume, challenging the conventional relationship between painting and wall.  Often seen resting or leaning on the floor, her works subvert their traditional role as paintings.  She has had solo exhibitions at Broadway,  Shrine, Document, Rebecca Camacho Presents  and Van Horn in Düsseldorf.  She has exhibited her work in group exhibitions at Ceysson Benetiere,  Venus Over Manhattan, Dependance and Overduin.  She has been awarded residencies at Parts and Labor in San Antonio, Villa Atrata in La Roche Posay, Volland Foundation, and the Saltonstall Foundation. Her works have been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, BOMB Magazine, and Art in America. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley and the Berkshires.