A nude figure lies in bed with frazzled hair, sickly colored linens draped haphazardly across their upper body. With fingertips glowing an inflamed, unnatural red, the character grasps a navy blue smartphone, staring catatonically at the glowing display. Emitting from the device, a vibrant infinity symbol is superimposed onto the scene, unfurling in endless loops of mesmerizing digital energy.
This all-too-relatable modern portrait serves as a striking entry point into a suite of powerful new works by Brooklyn-based artist Robin F. Williams. Her latest body of work captures the omnipotent techno-dystopia that contemporary society collectively barrels toward. By extrapolating on the ways humanity and machines increasingly merge, the artist presents a mystical, surreal vision of another world heavily infused with references to popular culture and art history.
Titled Act Natural, the exhibition plunges viewers straight into the uncanny valley without ever settling into the safe confines of everyday reality. The too-sleek, frictionless world portrayed by Williams exudes both the irresistible allure of modern technology and the immense, creeping horror it elicits from the human psyche.
Among the standout pieces in the collection is The Merminator, a canvas that brilliantly synthesizes two iconic cultural archetypes from the 1980s: the relentless cyborg assassin and the classic Disney princess. The resulting figure is a strange, metallic bot perched precariously upon a stone. Like Hans Christian Andersen’s original character or Disney’s animated Ariel, the hybrid creature peers outward toward a world it presumably longs to be a part of, yet one where it inherently cannot belong or find true acceptance.
Another striking work in the suite is I Am Not a Robot, a deeply symmetric piece that borrows heavily in both composition and color palette from the spiritualist abstractions of Hilma af Klint. At the same time, the painting draws historical inspiration from Sandro Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpiece Madonna of the Pomegranate, which traditionally utilizes the titular fruit as a rich visual metaphor for the human heart. In Williams’s contemporary iteration, however, the human heart is replaced by the smartphone, which radiates its luminous energy outward in place of a traditional life-giving source.
The exhibition also features works like Holy Thirst Trap, Language Model, and Spooky Action at a Distance, each expanding on the complex psychological and physical relationship between human bodies and digital interfaces. Through meticulous oil and acrylic techniques on linen and canvas, Williams constructs an unsettling visual lexicon that reflects our current era of algorithmic obsession, endless scrolling, and virtual alienation.
P·P·O·W gallery presents Act Natural as a special pop-up exhibition at Frieze’s No. 9 Cork Street location in London, where the collection remains on view to the public through October 24.
