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Christopher Williams
For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société
Industrielle (Revision 11)
Sat
06/12 – Sun 08/29, 2010
Press
conference: Thu 06/10/2010, 11am / Opening: Fri 06/11/2010,
7pm
RITTERSPORT
Von
oben nach unten / from the top to the bottom
100
g Tafeln / 100 g Bars
Offizieller Produktname / Official Product Name /
EAN Code Bar / UPC Code for Case / Bars per Case Voll
Nuss / Whole Hazelnuts / 4000417019004 / 050255013005 /
10
Joghurt / Yogurt / 40004170270 09 /
050255027000 / 12
Voll
Erdnuss / 4000417262202 / 10
Weisse Voll Nuss / White Whole Hazelnuts /
4000417013002 / 050255013003 / 10
Marzipan / Marzipan / 4000417025005 / 050255025006
/12
Cappuccino / Cappuccino / 40004172300 03 /
0550255230042 /12
October 24th (No. 1), 2008
2009
Archival
Pigment Print on Cotton Rag Paper
85,6 x
94,2 cm (framed)
Edition
of 10
Courtesy
Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
In the summer of
2010, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden will present an
exhibition of works by the American artist Christopher
Williams (b. Los Angeles 1956).
The show is the next
installment in Williams’ exhibition series For Example:
Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle featuring
both older pieces and a set of new works by the artist.
Williams graduated from the renowned California Institute
of the Arts (CalArts), where he studied under John Baldessari
and Douglas Huebler; he is professor at the Academy of Fine
Arts in Düsseldorf. He is regarded as one of the most
important representatives of the tradition of Conceptualism in
contemporary art. Yet the conceptual framework of the artist’s
work is complicated by his emphasis on the visual and
technical quality of his pictures, contrasting with the
processes of many first generation Conceptual artists whose
traditions he is working within. Like other artists of his
generation, Christopher Williams believes that as media
decisively shapes our society, there is political significance
in questioning images. In installations, performances, videos,
and, most importantly, photographs, he examines how aesthetic
conventions and their dissemination affect our understanding
of reality. Since the late 1980s, he has heavily relied on the
motifs and forms of ex isting images, borrowing from the
advertising and cultural context. Professional technicians are
hired to photograph the subjects that he chooses, producing
images of animals, plants, industrial products, modernist
architecture, and people, with great technical precision. His
subjects are often depicted from an objective distance,
isolating them in the picture by setting them against neutral
backdrops. But Williams’ images are never re-touched, and so
diverge from the ‘perfection’ of commercial images by
retaining tiny and almost imperceptible flaws or moments of
disturbance.
Kodak Three Point Reflection
Guide,
© 1968
Eastman Kodak Company, 1968.
(Meiko laughing)
Vancouver, B.C.
April 6, 2005
2005
C-print
Photograph: 50,8 x 61 cm; 20 x 24 inches
Framed:
86,7 x 96 cm; 34 x 37 3/4 inches
Ed. of
10 + 4 AP
Courtesy
Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
The artist acts in
a manner of a director, staging the images and then having
them meticulously printed, often using traditional printing
methods that are on the verge of obsolescence.
Another
important component of Williams’ work are the titles of his
pictures, which usually inform the viewer of the technical and
commercial data about the subject, the name of the
photographer and the studio in which it was photographed, the
date of the execution, and the materials and processed used.
The viewer is thus forever caught between the contemplation of
‘beautiful’ photographs and an artist’s meditations on
photography, a reflexive and utterly un-nostalgic tightrope
walk between the medium’s history and its future.
Untitled (Study in Red)
Dirk
Schaper Studio, Berlin,
April 30th, 2009
2009
Archival
Pigment Print
71 x 64
cm (framed)
Courtesy
Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
The
catalogue with essays by Mark Godfrey and Karola Kraus is
published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne,
German/English.
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