BROTHERS’ BONES BESIDE
300 W Superior St, Chicago
October 3 - November, 2025
Gallery Victor is pleased to present Brothers’ Bones Beside, a solo exhibition of new paintings and prints by William Blake. On view from October 3 through November 2025, this will be Blake’s most comprehensive presentation at the gallery to date. Known for his meticulous engagement with historical imagery, Blake draws on 19th-century American painting, sculpture, and Civil War reenactment to interrogate how the nation’s past is remembered and visually codified.
In Brothers’ Bones Beside, Blake revisits the symbols, figures, and artifacts of the Civil War era, reframing them through a contemporary lens. The works address themes of national memory, reconciliation, and identity, incorporating subjects such as Houdon’s George Washington, the Apollo Belvedere, and the maritime disaster of the Sultana. By collapsing historical narratives and visual traditions, Blake’s paintings create space for beauty, grief, and critical reflection on who is considered brother.
Location
Dates
Opening Reception | Friday, October 3, 6–8pm
Conversation with Donato Loia | Thursday, October 16, 6pm
To See a New Nation | oil on linen | 80 x 54in
“While William Blake’s work engages the weight of history, his painterly skill evokes the timeless clarity of Winslow Homer- precise, evocative, and quietly monumental. He is a force in painting to be watched.”
- Curator Nato Thompson
“His paintings create vivid historical interventions, offering new ways to see, contextualize, and question the past. Armed with an inquisitive presentist lens, Blake dissects celebrated national symbols, painting iconoclastic gestures that disrupt our grand narratives. This method of historical intervention offers us the opportunity to interrogate the undergirding ideals of the Civil War, to ponder reconciliation, and yet again pose the question: who is a brother and who is not?”
— Cultural Historian TK Smith
Stag Dance | oil on linen | 69 x 54in
To Illinois | oil on linen | 70 x 36in
To See a New Nation | oil on linen | 80 x 54in
Head 1 | oil on linen| 12 x 10in
Head 2 | oil on linen | 12 x 10in
Teeth | oil on linen | 8 x 10in
Father Abraam | oil on linen | 18 x 14in
After Appomattox | oil on linen | 24 x 48in
Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog with an introduction by cultural historian TK Smith and an essay by historian Abbi Smithmyer.
