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Artist: Didier William

Galerie Peter Kilchmann presents Didier William’s first solo exhibition in France and his second with the gallery. Entitled Lot Bò D’lo A — a Haitian Creole expression literally meaning « on the other side of the water » — the exhibition presents thirteen paintings realised this year. The ensemble is complemented by the emblematic installation Gesture to Home (2024), originally conceived for the Prospect.6 Triennial in New Orleans in 2024. The installation brings together pictorial and sculptural elements within a complex, immersive spatial environment.

William's oeuvre is distinguished by the mastery with which he combines different techniques and materials. His works are characterized by a rich formal vocabulary, frequently bringing together acrylic, ink and carving on wood panel. From the layering of these media emerge dense visual spaces, oscillating between figuration, memory and narrative openness.

Water is the starting point of this new series of paintings. It evokes a distance that is both physical and metaphysical: the distance separating those who emigrated from those who stayed, the places left behind from those now inhabited, the living from those who came before them. But for William, water is never merely a border. It is also a threshold, a passage, a space of transformation and metamorphosis, capable of linking different territories as well as different states of existence. This elasticity runs through the exhibition, where landscapes become sites of a memory in motion, never a mere backdrop. The earth is sometimes represented as a body: its flesh, skin, entrails, or brain matter surface in the compositions, as if the artist were seeking to extract its memory and probe its history. Several paintings are thus organized on two levels: vast landscapes unfold in the upper part, while another world appears beneath or through their surface — submerged figures, exposed roots, layers of earth.

With Lot Bò D’lo A, William presents one of his most resolved bodies of work to date. At once deeply intimate and historically expansive, the exhibition offers a reflection on the multiple meanings of home and on the enduring power of landscape to carry transmission and stories across generations. These paintings of great emotional depth remind us that water does not merely separate worlds: it connects them.

all images © the gallery and the artist(s)