The Philosophical Research Society is pleased to present
here now, now gone, gone here
by Senon Williams
On view September 26 through November 15, 2026
The Philosophical Research Society is honored to present here now, now gone, gone here., a new solo exhibition by Los Angeles–based artist Senon Williams, at Hansell Gallery, curated by dama.
There is a way grief enters as a condition for something to rearrange the room before we understand what has changed. In encountering the work of Senon Williams, we return to this feeling that meaning is assembled piece by piece, fragment by fragment, in the quiet aftermath of rupture.
Native to Los Angeles, Senon Williams is a lifelong visual artist and musician. His longtime study of economy with words and their multiplicity of meanings centers a desire to create glimpses into the inherent human struggle, both ancient and contemporary. His work finds space in the natural, exposing both the outstanding and devastating stages of human evolution. This duality of emergence and collapse, of beauty and violence threads through his practice like a pulse.
Williams does not begin with a blank surface but with what has already been touched. Collected materials like nails, slips of paper, fragments of language, industrial remnants rearranged in his studio carry their own histories, their own violences and in his hands, they are transmuted and listened to. Assemblage becomes a form of attention, a way of holding what the world has discarded and asking it to speak again.
The materials themselves carry a charged industrial vocabulary and elements that are sharp, rigid, unyielding are arranged with a care that borders on devotion. Painted surfaces in scorched yellows and deep blacks evoke warning, hazard, the visual residue of emergency. Words like OFFENSIVE, EMBARGO, FRONT hover within these fields, recalling the mediated language through which war is often distanced. Yet in Williams’s work, that distance collapses. The hand is visible, the surface breathes and each work becomes a kind of provisional altar and a site where fragments gather, where orientation is lost and reimagined, where the remains of language and matter are asked to hold something of the unspeakable.
Improvisation guides the hand. Structures emerge without a fixed blueprint: thread pulled into tense geometries, nails gathered into constellations, painted fields that gradually shape the growth of fire. These gestures echo a body thinking through making as a form of knowledge that bypasses explanation and settles instead into rhythm, repetition, and touch. There is something here of the score, of the musician’s ear, an attunement to pause, to silence, to the interval between forms.
To witness this practice is to understand that nothing here is accidental. Even in improvisation, there is a poetic arrangement that insists on relation and to assemble is to insist that even in fracture, something can be held, however briefly, together.
Williams’s work stands, then, as both archive and invocation: a record of what has been broken, and a gesture toward reconfiguration.
There is a way grief enters as a condition for something to rearrange the room before we understand what has changed. In encountering the work of Senon Williams, we return to this feeling that meaning is assembled piece by piece, fragment by fragment, in the quiet aftermath of rupture.
Native to Los Angeles, Senon Williams is a lifelong visual artist and musician. His longtime study of economy with words and their multiplicity of meanings centers a desire to create glimpses into the inherent human struggle, both ancient and contemporary. His work finds space in the natural, exposing both the outstanding and devastating stages of human evolution. This duality of emergence and collapse, of beauty and violence threads through his practice like a pulse.
Williams does not begin with a blank surface but with what has already been touched. Collected materials like nails, slips of paper, fragments of language, industrial remnants rearranged in his studio carry their own histories, their own violences and in his hands, they are transmuted and listened to. Assemblage becomes a form of attention, a way of holding what the world has discarded and asking it to speak again.
The materials themselves carry a charged industrial vocabulary and elements that are sharp, rigid, unyielding are arranged with a care that borders on devotion. Painted surfaces in scorched yellows and deep blacks evoke warning, hazard, the visual residue of emergency. Words like OFFENSIVE, EMBARGO, FRONT hover within these fields, recalling the mediated language through which war is often distanced. Yet in Williams’s work, that distance collapses. The hand is visible, the surface breathes and each work becomes a kind of provisional altar and a site where fragments gather, where orientation is lost and reimagined, where the remains of language and matter are asked to hold something of the unspeakable.
Improvisation guides the hand. Structures emerge without a fixed blueprint: thread pulled into tense geometries, nails gathered into constellations, painted fields that gradually shape the growth of fire. These gestures echo a body thinking through making as a form of knowledge that bypasses explanation and settles instead into rhythm, repetition, and touch. There is something here of the score, of the musician’s ear, an attunement to pause, to silence, to the interval between forms.
To witness this practice is to understand that nothing here is accidental. Even in improvisation, there is a poetic arrangement that insists on relation and to assemble is to insist that even in fracture, something can be held, however briefly, together.
Williams’s work stands, then, as both archive and invocation: a record of what has been broken, and a gesture toward reconfiguration.
ARTIST BIO
Senon Williams is a lifelong visual artist and musician, and a Los Angeles native. Ranging in media from paintings on paper and canvas, to wood sculpture and assemblage. Senon explores poignant visualization of the inherent human struggle both ancient and contemporary. He finds space in the natural world, exposing stages of human evolution. His love of language play, sounds, textures, and associations of word and object often explore the triumphs and conflicts inherent in identity, history, and community. Senon’s search for truth leaves him amazed and baffled. Creating art is his meditation on meaning, or no meaning in the face of our turbulent existence. We are invited to support or defy multiple conclusions, how do we help and how do we hurt? The written word and poetry is a consistent part of his practice. He has published four books: Hunted & Gathered (2017, Hamilton Press), Words Don’t Mean Much (Hat & Beard Press, 2021), Rituals (Lauren Powell Projects/Keep or Gift After Purchase, 2023) and Scrapyard (Hat & Beard Press, 2025), as well as multiple zines.
Senon’s work has been shown at Five Car Garage (LA), The Hole NYC (LA), Rusha & Co. (LA), PRJCTLA (LA), The Lodge (LA), Auxiliary Projects (NYC), Beyond The Streets, Southampton Arts Center (NY), FT Gallery (Phnom Penh), amongst many others.
Senon’s work has been shown at Five Car Garage (LA), The Hole NYC (LA), Rusha & Co. (LA), PRJCTLA (LA), The Lodge (LA), Auxiliary Projects (NYC), Beyond The Streets, Southampton Arts Center (NY), FT Gallery (Phnom Penh), amongst many others.
This exhibition is supported in part by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture. |
Please email [email protected] or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions. Visit www.prs.org to view current event listings, course offerings, shop the online bookstore, and sign up for email announcements. |
