One of the most innovative and influential artists to come out of the Bay Area, William T. Wiley (1937-2021), used wordplay, virtuosic painting and his encyclopedic knowledge of art history to address current social, political and environmental issues. In this exhibition of paintings on canvas and paper from the 1990s, Wiley employs quotations from Bosch and Bruegel, Warhol and Whistler, Mondrian and Manet, as he reflects on the absurdity of the human condition.

Though his signature style was wholly original and always entirely recognizable, Wiley audaciously and gleefully "stole" from both his predecessors and his peers. Sometimes he was reverent; sometimes he was cheeky. Always, he was empathetic, in his open-ended investigations of the moral responsibility of the global citizen.

Though 30 years old, the works selected for this exhibition grapple with many of the same topics that are in our current headlines — environmental degradation, inequality, the horrors of war, and governments that fail their people.