Feeling Color: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling, organized by the Modern and Curator María Elena Ortiz, celebrates the work of two tour de force artists, exhibited together for the first time, and highlighting their respective contributions to the story of late-twentieth-century abstract painting. After leaving their native Guyana, and though appearing to share similar territory in basing themselves in London, Williams and Bowling trod very separate paths in their respective artistic development and careers.

The exhibition presents works from Williams’s expansive Shostakovich and Olmec-Maya and Now series, 1980–88, amongst others. Williams was an avid fan of the music of Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich and coined the phrase “feeling color” whilst working on a painterly interpretation of his symphonies and quartets. The latter series was consolidated from Williams’s enduring interest in the remarkable advancement of Pre-Columbian cultures, as a reflection of current philosophies. In dialogue with Williams’s works are several paintings of Bowling’s influential Map series, 1967–71, and his later poured paintings, as evidencing sociopolitical concerns and exploring the materiality of paint.