William Wray

Do it AGAIN

The color PINK represents love, friendship, affection, harmony, inner peace, and approachability. William Wray: given how much art impacts our lives today, what do you think about hosting another PINK Pop-Up Show?

Pink Pop up Show logo by William Wray

The Pink Pop-Up Show

Wray started out as a cartoonist and animator working as a comic book artist with Marvel, DC Comics, and Mad magazine and as an animator for the popular cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show. His art is a blend of traditional skill sets from realism and the sheer energy of abstract expressionism in an ongoing evolution to finding the right balance between two seemingly unrelated styles. He challenges himself to create a brand of realistic expressionism he hopes to use as a bridge into the customarily circumspect contemporary art world. 

The color pink as well as its varieties that range from bubble gum to flamingo to cherry blossom, is most often associated with little girls and their delicate femininity. But when you give the color to a group of creative, visual artists and ask what pink represents to them, you enter into the color behind the color.

We sat down with Wray as he and a team of people were preparing the gallery for their Pink show. Sitting on an outside patio next to a wall of sparkly, pink curtains, I simply asked, “Why pink?” Read entire interview here.

PINK logo Design2 by William Wray

A brief history explained 

2017 Castelli Art Space, Culver City: The Pink show is an outrageously simple concept: we are striping the meat off the usual complex curatorial group show carcass of political complexity and playing with a cute little chew toy combo instead. This grouping of wildly diverse artists has been gathered at great effort and expense just to reflect upon on one happy color (in this case Pink) in their own personal way.

In this age of political anger convulsing from every tweet, on the troubled world stage, maybe can we at the least find some harmony in the art world where righteous disagreement is really not that essential for life to go on? With this little show we hope to encourage by example that all art can live live in creative harmony if it’s simply great art. 

William has lived in California most of his life and studied painting at the Art Students League in New York. 

PINK Show card 5x7 by William Wray