Sorcerer by William Crump
10"x8" ($24) | 14"x11" ($60) | 20"x16" ($240) | 30"x24" ($1200)
If a great artist (nay, human) is anything, it's constantly evolving, and this new piece from 20x200 fixture William Crump reveals a range of work that takes our collection of his art in a totally different direction. Scope out our limited-edition print of his painting Sorcerer. We recommend you go ahead and give into its charms.
Crump conjures a sense of continual renewal through his own special incantation—an enchantingly balanced witches brew of subtraction and addition. To create his oeuvre of abstract paintings, Crump layers, removes, and repeats until he starts to see a destination take shape. Some pieces rest on a more minimal note, blackness or blur quieting the visual plane, while others, like today’s edition, find a voluble, extroverted end. Dense areas of paint, marbling, and tool marks all compete for our attention in Sorcerer, drawing the eye in dizzyingly disparate directions. That’s part of how this piece puts you under the its spell.
Since Crump scanned the painting directly, every nuance of texture is visible in the print, down to the bubbly inconsistencies, and the thickness of the paint where it warps the panel. These organic elements give Sorcerer so much personality. There’s a very visceral, raw quality to the edition. And we’d be remiss not to mention that these details are extra eye-catching and expressive in larger print format—the bigger the print, the more you can appreciate the artwork's enigmatic layers.
Stylistically, Sorcerer may seem like a pretty stark departure from the two editions already in our Crump collection. Both The Mountain of Westward Expansion and The Mountain of Tomorrow's Sunrise come from the NYC-based artist’s 2007 series High Lonesome, a project inspired by a Christian ministry sign that read "The Mountain of Fire and Miracles". Crump found this phrasing especially evocative, and was immediately drawn to its implied promise of a sublime world beyond our everyday, exploring that idea through work that wavers between fantasy and reality.
While Sorcerer is representative of the artist’s more recent work in abstraction via acrylic on panel, it takes a similarly playful approach to perception. You might be inclined to search its swirling planes for semblances of form, or to interpret Crump’s color combinations as characters in the artwork’s story. Or maybe you're content to curl up in the mystery. Whatever the case, you'll wanna collect Sorcerer faster than you can say “Abracadaba”.
With art for everyone,
Jen Bekman + Team 20x200
