Amanda Williams

Color is everything to me. You can’t just say “black.” Which one? 
—Amanda Williams

Gagosian is pleased to present CANDYLADYBLACK, an exhibition of new paintings by Amanda Williams from the series What Black Is This, You Say? (2020–). Williams’s painting What black is this you say?—Although rarely recognized as such, ‘The Candy Lady’ and her ‘Candy Store’ provided one of your earliest examples of black enterprise, cooperative economics, black women CEOs and good customer service”—black (07.24.20) (2021) was included, along with earlier works in the series, in Social Works II at Gagosian London in 2021. CANDYLADYBLACK is her first solo exhibition at the gallery.

In her paintings, sculptures, installations, and photographs, Williams uses color as a tool to examine the complex ways in which race informs our assignment of value to physical, social, and conceptual spaces. She often begins projects by meditating on a specific color or set of colors, which she relates to an everyday space or scenario. In her breakout series, Color(ed) Theory (2014–16), she painted houses in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood that were earmarked for demolition in a spectrum of monochrome hues associated with Black culture. The photographs that document the intervention constitute a striking interrogation of the inequities of urban development.