William T. Wiley
Frumkin & Struve Gallery
With his well-known persona—the faux naïf from the lotusland of Marin County—and his relentlessly esoteric references, William Wiley seems like a spiritualist who doesn’t want to take himself too seriously. He frequently masks his reverence with a veneer of wackiness in order to remain one of the northern-California good-time boys—along with Robert Hudson, Richard Shaw, Robert Arneson, and Roy DeForest—who make crazy constructions. He obscures his metaphysical concerns by cramming the canvas or paper surface with his signature febrile charcoal line which describes a personal repertoire of symbols,