WILLA
WASSERMAN

Through painterly processes that bind figuration to material transformation, Willa Wasserman constructs images in which bodies, surfaces, and atmospheres evolve together. Her practice engages states of becoming, ambiguity, and intimacy, articulating queerness as a condition of form rather than a representational motif. Working with materials that register time — oil, silverpoint, linen, and oxidized metals — she cultivates a field of suggestiveness where transparency is continuously negotiated with opacity. Her works sustain relations between self, light, matter, and desire, proposing perception as a slow, relational act shaped by exposure, fragility, and transformation across painting, drawing, and material experimentation.

After a two month residency at casa onze, Willa Wasserman presented Purple Apple, at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel. The exhibition brought together works developed between São Paulo and New York, exploring intimacy, transformation, and material process through painting. Produced largely during her time at casa onze, the exhibition reflected an ongoing engagement with site, atmosphere, and the conditions of making.

Willa Wasserman (b. 1990) lives and works in New York. She received her BFA from Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College in 2013 and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include Travesía Cuatro, Madrid (2025) and Guadalajara (2024); François Ghebaly, New York (2023) and Los Angeles (2022); High Art, Paris, France (2022); Downs & Ross, New York (2021); Good Weather, Chicago (2020); and in lieu, Los Angeles (2020). Selected group exhibitions include James Cohan, New York (2024); Modern Art, London (2023); Michael Werner Gallery, London, UK (2022); Sargent’s Daughters, New York (2020); and Park View / Paul Soto, Los Angeles (2019).