Nigel Ip

Amidst the panic and pandemonium of a hectic Frieze Week, a sinister force was brewing underneath The Horse Hospital near Russell Square.

Coterie is Nicholas C. Williams‘ first solo exhibition in London in 30 years, showcasing a variety of his distinctive paintings and sculptures. The gravity of this achievement was clear at the bustling private view, surrounded by his proud family, friends, and life models.

Emerging from the featureless walls of this darkened lair are strange characters set in tableaux vivants. They provoke a multitude of questions from the viewer. Who are they? Where are they? What do the props mean? What is the story? How is everything painted with such minute precision?

Williams is a stickler for painting and drawing from life. He sketches out a broad concept for a figure and hires the right kind of model to bring it to life. He makes his own props and masks from plaster and renders them with illusionistic properties on the canvas; for the first time, his masks are shown alongside their counterparts and they are creepy as hell. The spotlighting effect in the dim exhibition space mimics the dark, controlled conditions of his studio.

There are very few words to describe Williams’ works accurately – you really have to experience them in person – and I think contemporary classicism is a close enough answer. There are figments of homages to the Old Masters, especially the heavy chiaroscuro of Caravaggio’s storytelling and still lifes, the spiritualism of Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer in Williams’ single portraits, and a certain monumentality in his sculpture akin to Michelangelo’s marble nudes. Yet everything is also very twisted, like we’ve entered a hyper-surreal nightmare filled with masked gangs and shiny plastic limbs.

The whole thing is a smoke-and-mirrors game. We will never know the circumstances of Williams’ fictive worlds, only hints that may or may not suggest anything useful in understanding his works. It’s all a bit strange, mind-boggling, and weirdly thrilling. Just in time for Halloween.

Nicholas C. Williams: Coterie runs until 11 November 2023 at The Horse Hospital, Bloomsbury, London, https://www.thehorsehospital.com/