--- type: magazine_content title: "In Focus: Sue Williams" language: en url: "https://www.belvedere.at/en/stories/focus-sue-williams" --- # In Focus: Sue Williams ![Image](https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/2025-07/SW_Portrait_1993_frei.jpg.webp?itok=A3atOogD) Between Beauty and Disturbance **Category:** Artist [Contemporary](javascript:void(0);) **Published:** 28.05.2026 **Reading time:** 2 min read Visitors entering Sue Williams’ exhibition at Belvedere 21 may initially notice vibrant colors, dynamic lines, and images full of movement. The paintings created from the late 1990s onward, in particular, appear almost playful, featuring delicate patterns or bursts of color. Yet the longer one looks, the more the mood shifts: body fragments, violence, sexual allusions, and scenes of destruction suddenly emerge from the seemingly harmonious and abstract. **Text:** Katarina Lozo & Lisa Ebner-Kollmann **Photos:** Portrait: Lina Bertucci, Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York. Artwork: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Wien ![Sue Williams, Mike and Zbigniew, 2012 — © Sue Williams. Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / Vienna; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Skarstedt, New York/ Paris / London. Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna](https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/styles/full_content_width_no_crop/public/2026-02/Mike%20and%20Zbigniew_Ex%2053600%20Presse_0.jpg.webp?itok=t-D3Hsfz) It is precisely this tension between near and far vision, the figurative and the abstract, aesthetics and repulsion that Sue Williams works with. Born in Chicago Heights in 1954, the artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is one of the defining voices in contemporary painting. She gained international recognition in the early 1990s with works that directly address social power dynamics, violence against women, and political reality through a raw visual language. Williams consciously chose painting—a medium in which female bodies have been depicted for centuries, yet violence and subjugation often remain unspoken. Her early works address precisely this: in comic-like, graphic scenes, she makes visible what is otherwise repressed or trivialized. Alongside the depicted brutality, laconic text fragments point to society’s insidious treatment of sexualized violence, which is characterized by devaluation and trivialization. Over the decades, Williams’ visual language has undergone fundamental shifts, and the artist has developed a growing interest in the principles of painting. Scenes and figures dissolve, lines and colors gain autonomy, and abstract forms cover entire canvases. Yet her central themes remain present: the body, sexuality, power, and social violence. In doing so, Williams continually explores the medium’s possibilities anew, moving between figuration and abstraction, between precise drawing and explosive gesture. The exhibition *WHAT NOW* at Belvedere 21 brings this shifting yet consistent artistic development over four decades into view. Large-format paintings, dense all-over compositions, and richly detailed visual worlds fill the rooms with an energy that is at times alluring, at times unsettling. Humor, garish colors, and grotesque forms stand alongside images of war, trauma, and social upheaval. Yet the works are highly topical. Questions of power, political violence, social division, and the representation of female bodies continue to shape public debates. Williams combines these themes with personal experience, anger, irony, and a style of painting that defies stylistic categorization. It is precisely this that ensures her enduring relevance to this day. ![Sue Williams, A Funny Thing Happened, 1992 — CACE – Portuguese Contemporary Art Collection, photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna](https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/styles/full_content_width_no_crop/public/2026-02/Sue%20Williams_A%20Funny%20Thing%20Happened_Ex%2053614%20Presse.jpg.webp?itok=kYAdSFWb) Exhibition Sue Williams Belvedere 21 20 February 2026 - 6 June 2026 [ To the exhibition ](https://www.belvedere.at/en/sue-williams) [ Tickets ](https://www.belvedere.at/en/tickets?location%5B%5D=4)