Name: John Will
Item: Norberg Hall
Author: Lissa Robinson

John Will is a prolific painter, performance artist, master printmaker and trickster extraordinaire who has created subversive art since the 1960s. Born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1939, Will moved to Canada in 1971 to teach at the University of Calgary. An iconic figure in the local art scene, Will is celebrated for his inventiveness, irreverence and dogged disregard for the boundaries between art and life.

In his latest exhibition, Greed’l Get You, on view at Jarvis Hall Gallery until Aug. 29, Will presents a harsh yet poignant reflection on the human condition and the world's current ethos, using well-turned phrases and painterly wit.

The show features 198 text-based pieces selected from his Book of Wont. This unassuming, black notebook, which catalogues 841 works he has created since 2015, rests in a glass-covered plinth in the centre of the gallery. This record of riches marks a shift toward smaller works due to his move to a less capacious studio, and points to an earlier series about "nothing" that he began in 2013. Some of those earlier pieces are also included in the exhibition.

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John Will, “Greed’l Get You,” 2020

installation view (photo by Philip Kanwischer, courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary)

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John Will, “Greed’l Get You,” 2020

installation view (photo by Philip Kanwischer, courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary)

All works in the Book of Wont are painted on 22-inch by 30-inch sheets of paper. Colour fields range from stark white, intense yellows and deep oranges to soft pinks, bruised blues and deep blacks. Some are rendered in softly mottled paints or peppered with random splashes. Emerging from these painterly backgrounds are phrases and words that evoke laughter, despair, affirmation, shock, ambivalence and even embarrassment. For instance, in And God Created Me, yellow text on a pink field peers from behind a blue cloud, while the word “Lordy” mocks it from below.

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John Will, “Doom Doom Doom,” 2017

mixed media on paper, 22” x 30" (photo by Philip Kanwischer, courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary)

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John Will, “Every Dog Will Have Its Day,” 2016

mixed media on paper, 22” x 30” (photo by Philip Kanwischer, courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary)

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John Will, “And God Created Me,” 2020

mixed media on paper, 22” x 30" (photo by Philip Kanwischer, courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary)

Dark messages like “Hurt” and “Death” engulf some surfaces, while the word "Doom" hovers above, below and atop a dark apocalyptic cloud in Doom Doom Doom. In Will’s skilful hands, text comes to life in absurd, yet meaningful, ways. Defeatism, for example, is poignantly personified in Every Dog Will Have Its Day, written in bright yellow but overshadowed by sprayed black graffiti that shouts “Why Bother?”

But not everything is so bleak. Other truth-telling works poke fun at things like aging and vanity. In Hurting Girdle, a pristine phrase is marred by a flaring red blotch. Or a neatly scribed "Botox" is spoiled by a fatty yellow smear with the phrase, “Yep, I don’t need no make-up no more."

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John Will, “Botox - No Make-Up, No More,” 2018

mixed media on paper, 22” x 30" (photo by Philip Kanwischer, courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary)

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John Will, “Hurting Girdle,” 2015

mixed media on paper, 22” x 30" (photo by Philip Kanwischer, courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary)

Will’s textual tableaus are highly nuanced, deeply engaging and, at times, perturbingly bang on about the human condition. His ability to cut through the crap and give it to us straight is uncanny. But the genius is not just about the words he chooses, but their colours and shapes and how they are inscribed, rendered and arranged amidst different environments or obstacles.

Given their conceptual sharpness, it may be surprising to learn the works are initiated through an intuitive process that becomes more planned and precise as Will builds his deceptive layers. Colour fields go down first, followed by splashes (or just the splashes on white paper). Then comes text or other embellishments, like plastic eyes, an unfinished crossword or photographs. The lettering is hand-rendered in fonts that are surprisingly varied. In works such as And God Created Me or Fade Away and Down the Tube, the block text, while apparently laid down first, was actually painted last. The illusion is not only clever, but enhances the push-and-pull effect as words and forms arrange themselves in space. It also highlights how printmaking continues to inform Will’s work.

Taken as a whole, Greed'l Get You is a mind-boggling spectacle that cheekily narrates contemporary lived experience using words and phrases that collectively form a tableau vivant brought to life through the painterly equivalents of scenery, costuming and props. ■

John Will: Greed’l Get You is on view at Jarvis Hall Gallery in Calgary from July 10 to Aug. 29, 2020.

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