Purple Art

[March 27 2025]

“William S. Burroughs” Exhibition at October Gallery London

William S. Burroughs returns to the October Gallery, extending a decades-long dialogue with the space. His mixed-media compositions unravel like oneiric landscapes, tracing the shifting identities that define both his literary and visual works. Gunshots on paper, modified roller painting—Burroughs revels in what others seek to airbrush out: the portrait of an ‘ugly America.’ A dissection of the monolithic man in a three-piece suit, his methods become an exorcism, a ritual in peeling away the mind’s cultural imprints.

Relentless in his scrutiny of human perception, the exhibition frames Burroughs as a performance artist—an architect of the subconscious. Each work acts as a portal to his inner reality, dense and layered like a palimpsest of spray paint and Cadillac paper, rusted and decomposing with the raw spontaneity of Beat mythology. Burned, collaged, and heavily marked, they possess an innocent pleasure—an invitation to step inside his fractured, foreseeing world.

On view until April 5th

Words by Julia Silverberg

Photos by Lucas Rathbone and courtesy of the gallery