A pioneering British conceptual artist, Willats (1943, London) has had a long association with Austria, having exhibited at Belvedere 21 (2019), Generali Foundation (2009), Kunsthaus Graz (2007), Grazer Kunstverein (1999) and Secession (1981) as well as featuring in Matteo Lucchetti’s Curated By exhibition Sleeping Producers at Charim in 2014.

Willats’ work charts a period in human history in which computer systems have been used to inform and determine an understanding of collective consciousness and the public conscience. From the outset of his career in the 1960s, Willats applied aspects of cybernetics and social theory to specific contexts, seeking a new visual language to articulate and reinvent the emergent systems of contemporary life. The artist’s specific interest in temporal progressions and personal transformations as feedback systems within a social environment have been a recurrent site of exploration in his practice and are central to themes explored in Transition Transform, his first solo exhibition at Charim in June-July 2024.

Stephen Willats’ recent solo exhibitions have been presented at Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland, Tate Liverpool, England, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Whitechapel Gallery, London, England and Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany. His works are held in the collections of the National Galerie, Berlin, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Landesmuseum Münster, Kunsthaus Zurich, Migros Museum, Zurich, Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among others.