Ceremony of Faces is a site-responsive installation in the KMAC lobby that consists of large felt and multimedia compositions by the artist William J. O'Brien. The artist frequently focuses his expression and area of research on head shapes, viewing them as containers of multiple meanings inspired by over a millennium of artistic exploration into the human form and particularly the human head, a container itself of our consciousness and thoughts on our existence and place within the universe. The forms could serve as conceptual links to the busts of gods and heroes in Greek and Roman antiquity, the monolithic heads of Easter Island, or the colossal ancient Olmec heads of Mexico, but they could also be viewed within O'Brien's personal interests in the colorful Modernist work of an artist like Paul Klee and the rule breaking outsider ethos within 20th century art that was prominently championed by Jean Dubuffet. While the frenetic quality of these works also connects with the childlike fervor for excessively drawing and making faces, both happy and sad, they could also be seen as masks, stand-ins for imaginary oversized beings that can be imbued with personalities and used as a kind of mascot for talking and thinking through difficult to process ideas and feelings. Aside from seeing them as heads, faces, or masks, there is also an amorphous, spectral nature to them, a ghostlike quality with the face coming in and out of focus as the viewer moves closer or farther away. The subject of ghosts appears in O'Brien's work as a spiritual medium for probing what it means to be human and if our humanity, the virtues of empathy and compassion are carried on into the afterlife.

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​William J. O'Brien is a Chicago based artist whose work was the subject of a solo exhibition entitled Oscillates Wildly at KMAC in 2017. The show explored the full breadth of his practice at the time, featuring drawing, painting, and multimedia installations, alongside his notable work in craft-based media including textiles, ceramic, bronze, and steel sculptures. O'Brien's work, moving between abstraction and figuration, two-dimensional surfaces, and three-dimensional structures, is distinguished across all mediums by a boundless energy and an endless exploration of the varying relationships between color, form, pattern, and texture. His creative process is often meditative and improvisational, responsive to the tensions between order and disorder. While his wildly expressive compositions absorb and reflect his own personal traumas and exuberances, his work also considers the grief and joy of our shared collective experience.

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O’Brien has held solo exhibitions at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Renaissance Society, Chicago, KMAC Museum, Louisville, MAD Museum, NYC, Witte De With, Rotterdam, and The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City among others. In 2014 he had his first major museum survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago curated by Naomi Beckwith. He has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the U-Cross Foundation. O’Brien has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and Artadia. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Cleveland Clinic, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Miami Art Museum, Pérez Art Museum, Hammer Museum, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, KMAC, and The Art Institute of Chicago. O’Brien is also Professor, Chair of Ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.