Christopher Williams (artist)

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Christopher Williams (born 1956, Los Angeles) is an American conceptual artist and fine art photographer.[1] He lives in Cologne and works in Düsseldorf.[2]

Early life and education

In the 1970s and early 1980s, he studied at the California Institute of the Arts where he received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. under the first generation of West Coast conceptual artists including John Baldessari,[3] Douglas Huebler, and Michael Asher.[4] Since October 2008 he has been a Professor in Photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His wife is curator and Stedelijk Museum director Ann Goldstein.[5]

Work

Writing in Artforum in 2007, Tim Griffin described Williams's approach as "sociophotographic."[6] It has been said that Williams works within the tradition of institutional critique within what Sven Lütticken describes as an informal group, along with Willem de Rooij, Jeroen de Rijke and Mathias Poledna, that investigates the "parameters of the exhibition space."[7]

Made by a professional photographer who follows Williams's directions,[8] the conventionally scaled pictures have the glossy lucidity of excellent commercial photographs.[9]

Angola to Vietnam (1989) features a portfolio of twenty-seven black and white photographs of glass flowers from Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.[10] Drawing from the Peabody’s cache of sculptural specimens, Williams selected only those plants native to countries in which state-sponsored murders occurred in 1984. The information affixed to each photograph mimics the museum’s labels, but here Williams places the country of origin above the flower’s Latin name, subtly foregrounding the political over the natural. He reordered the exisiting taxonomic classification of the collection to classification by country of origin, and selected the twenty-seven specimens that coincided with an Amnesty International list of countries practicing the terror tactic of 'disapperance'.[11] By referencing government-sanctioned atrocities, Williams calls attention to the flowers’ colonial origins, as the science of botany is rooted in the tangled and often exploitative history of international exploration and trade.[12]

In 2000, at an exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery, in New York, Williams showed twenty photographs including a series of pictures of a 1964 Renault automobile on its side. Writing in the New York Times Ken Johnson said, "the Renault was made in a French factory where significant revolutionary activities took place in 1968; hence it is tipped up like a barricade.".[13]

Later photographs compose an inventory of increasingly obsolescent film-based equipment — cameras, lenses and darkroom gear — as beautiful and precise as catalog product shots. The accompanying text adds detail about how the equipment was used.[14]

Exhibitions

Williams' work has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide, most recently at the Art Institute of Chicago (2014); Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (both 2011); Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; and the Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (both 2010). Other notable solo exhibitions include the Kunsthalle Zürich (2007); Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2006); Secession, Vienna; and the Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (both 2005).[15] Since joining David Zwirner in 2000, Williams has had five solo exhibitions at the gallery in New York. "Christopher Williams: For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 18)" marked his first solo show at David Zwirner, London, in 2013.[16]

Williams participated in the 55th Venice Biennale in June 2013, curated by Massimiliano Gioni. His first solo museum exhibition in the United States will open in 2014 at The Art Institute of Chicago and will travel to The Museum of Modern Art, New York.[17]

Collections

Major museum collections which hold works by the artist include the Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; amongst others.[18]

References

  1. ↑ Getty Research, Union List of Artist Names Online
  2. ↑ Mary M. Lane (May 18, 2013), The Photo Perfectionist With a Yen to Provoke Wall Street Journal.
  3. ↑ Ken Johnson (April 7, 2000),ART IN REVIEW; Christopher Williams New York Times.
  4. ↑ Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness, August 2 – November 2, 2014
  5. ↑ Suzanne Muchnic (June 30, 2009), MOCA curator Ann Goldstein to lead Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum Los Angeles Times.
  6. ↑ Tim Griffin "Christopher Williams: Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Bologna," Artforum, January 2007.
  7. ↑ Lütticken, 122
  8. ↑ Mary M. Lane (May 18, 2013), The Photo Perfectionist With a Yen to Provoke Wall Street Journal.
  9. ↑ Ken Johnson (April 7, 2000),ART IN REVIEW; Christopher Williams New York Times.
  10. ↑ This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, February 11 – June 3, 2012 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
  11. ↑ Christopher Williams, Angola to Vietnam (1989) Christie's Contemporary Art (Evening Sale), 16 May 2000, New York.
  12. ↑ This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, February 11 – June 3, 2012 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
  13. ↑ Ken Johnson (April 7, 2000),ART IN REVIEW; Christopher Williams New York Times.
  14. ↑ Philip Gefter (January 23, 2014), The Next Big Picture - With Cameras Optional, New Directions in Photography New York Times.
  15. ↑ Christopher Williams, For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 18), May 17 - June 15, 2013 David Zwirner, London.
  16. ↑ Zwirner, David. "Exhibition Schedule Christopher Williams". Retrieved 19 April 2013. 
  17. ↑ Boucher, Brian. "Christopher Williams Exhibition Will Hit Art Institute, MoMA". Retrieved 19 April 2013. 
  18. ↑ Christopher Williams, For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 18), May 17 - June 15, 2013 David Zwirner, London.

Literature

External links

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