Apples, soap, haystacks, a centerfold model, a rooster, children at play, a man with a camera in a freshly laundered shirt, and a smiling four-year-old girl. standard pose, an exhibition of works by Christopher Williams, on view at the Paris gallery.
The photographs in this exhibition are the product of Williams’s decades-long engagement with public pictures, ordinary pictures, or pictorial types. This exhibition is not made up of images of reality, but rather the reality of these images.
Image: Christopher Williams, Bergische Bauernscheune, Junkersholz Leichlingen, September 29, 2009, 2010. © Christopher Williams. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Christopher Williams’s work addresses the visual and informational structures that define everyday life. Working in a variety of media, including photography, video, and installation, his multifaceted practice incorporates references to multiple sources and precedents, including the artist’s own ever-expanding inventory of imagery and discursive materials.
“With pictures of Mustafa Kinte, a Gambian immigrant, holding a Makina camera and of a model posing topless on a striped beach chair, the series raises wider questions about representation: How does photography fare when representing ‘Black’ skin? How has photography been complicit in the objectification of women, and what counter-representations might be possible? Williams’s images reflect on photography’s historical role in the formation of the society of the spectacle.”
—Mark Godfrey, Roxana Marcoci, Matthew S. Witkovsky, 2014
Christopher Williams, Standardpose [Standard Pose] / 1,0 Zwerg-Brabanter, silber, Düsseldorf 2013 (Vera Spix, Elsdorf) / Ring number: EE-D13 13-901, green / Studio Rhein Verlag, Düsseldorf / November 21, 2013, 2014 (detail).
Christopher Williams, Standardpose [Standard Pose] / 1,0 Zwerg-Brabanter, silber, Düsseldorf 2013 (Vera Spix, Elsdorf) / Ring number: EE-D13 13-901, green / Studio Rhein Verlag, Düsseldorf / November 21, 2013, 2014 (detail).
“Ambivalence is also reflected in his pictures, which emulate regular advertisements but include tiny yet deliberate imperfections.… Employing a film director’s approach, Williams has spent the past 35 years pursuing an artistic practice that examines the theoretical and political history of photographic technology in the larger political terrain.”
—Roxana Marcoci, 2014
Christopher Williams, Model-Nr.: 1740 / Rotznasen - Kinder Model Agentur / Liesegangstr. 7A / 40211 Düsseldorf / Studio Rhein Verlag, Düsseldorf / January 28, 2016, 2016 (detail).
Christopher Williams, Model-Nr.: 1740 / Rotznasen - Kinder Model Agentur / Liesegangstr. 7A / 40211 Düsseldorf / Studio Rhein Verlag, Düsseldorf / January 28, 2016, 2016 (detail).
“She is German. She is white. She is a professional within the field of image production. She is an instrument, a medium, a figure in an equation. She is paid to produce the signs of innocence and happiness. She is a worker in a network of economies beyond her comprehension.… To focus is to assert a preference for one surface over another. For every fragment of the world, a fragment of the camera. A model is a representation of a system.”
—Christopher Williams, Open Letter to Model No. 1740, 2016
Christopher Williams, Natürlich bekommen Sie für den Preis eines / van Laack Hemdes zwei andere. / Of course, for the price of one van Laack shirt, you can get two others. / Dirk Schaper Studio, Berlin, July 20th, 2007, 2008 (detail).
Christopher Williams, Natürlich bekommen Sie für den Preis eines / van Laack Hemdes zwei andere. / Of course, for the price of one van Laack shirt, you can get two others. / Dirk Schaper Studio, Berlin, July 20th, 2007, 2008 (detail).
Christopher Williams, Reinigung Ursula Schweyen / Lindenstr. 34, Köln / February 17, 2010, 2010 (detail).
Christopher Williams, Reinigung Ursula Schweyen / Lindenstr. 34, Köln / February 17, 2010, 2010 (detail).
“Williams takes the objects we take for granted as his undying subject, transforming them through an excess of the vernacular into states that are foreign, unknown.”
—Alexandra Kadlec, 2014
The staged nature of the present trilogy of works, which involved creating the accident that caused the dent in the car’s frame, removing the chrome to spray-paint the surface and then painstakingly reattaching it, contrasts greatly with the downgrading of image quality as a result of the speed with which photographs are taken and circulated today. While the simplicity of the resulting photograph belies this intensity, the dent in the otherwise smooth surface and the damaged bumper are subtle hints that we are not looking at a straightforward image.
Christopher Williams, Bläsing G 2000, Bläsing GmbH, Essen / Model: Christoph Boland / November 15, 2010, 2010 (detail).
Christopher Williams, Bläsing G 2000, Bläsing GmbH, Essen / Model: Christoph Boland / November 15, 2010, 2010 (detail).
“Imagine holding your finger over a text on your iPhone so that the cursor becomes a magnifier enlarging the area under your finger. This is a good image for the way that I move through types of production. At any one point I may choose to amplify just one element, or two elements, but within the show things accumulate into networks of focus within something that at first appears to be just a conventional display of pictures.”
—Christopher Williams, 2014
Christopher Williams, Fachhochschule Aachen / Fachbereich Gestaltung / Studiengang: Visuelle Kommunikation / Fotolabor für Studenten / Boxgraben 100, Aachen / November 8, 2010, 2010 (detail).
Christopher Williams, Fachhochschule Aachen / Fachbereich Gestaltung / Studiengang: Visuelle Kommunikation / Fotolabor für Studenten / Boxgraben 100, Aachen / November 8, 2010, 2010 (detail).
“In most of his exhibitions Williams toys with conventions of display and engages with the architecture—and sometimes the institutional history—of the spaces in which he installs his work.… He also physically intervenes in the architecture of the space, building temporary walls that contrast the permanent ones.”
—Michael Irwin, 2017
Installation view, Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photography by EPW Studio
Installation view, Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photography by EPW Studio
Installation view, Christopher Williams: Normative Models, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover. Photo by Maris Hutchinson
Installation view, Christopher Williams: Normative Models, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover. Photo by Maris Hutchinson
Installation view, Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness, Whitechapel Gallery, London. Photo by Maris Hutchinson
Installation view, Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness, Whitechapel Gallery, London. Photo by Maris Hutchinson
Installation view, Christopher Williams: Normative Models, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover. Photo by Maris Hutchinson
Installation view, Christopher Williams: Normative Models, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover. Photo by Maris Hutchinson
Installation view, Christopher Williams: Normative Models, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover. Photo by Maris Hutchinson
Installation view, Christopher Williams: Normative Models, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover. Photo by Maris Hutchinson
Christopher Williams, Provisional Prop, Wall Coverings, Radio, Printed Matter, Picture Frames, Photographs, Films, Arrangements, 2021. Single-channel video, 31:50min. Overall dimensions variable. Edition of 10
Christopher Williams, Provisional Prop, Wall Coverings, Radio, Printed Matter, Picture Frames, Photographs, Films, Arrangements, 2021. Single-channel video, 31:50min. Overall dimensions variable. Edition of 10
“Each photograph appears pristine, controlled, an emblem of self-containment, since everything in it was intended to be there. But its supplements—the elongated caption and the adjacent photographs that appear whenever it is exhibited, a nearby video, a catalogue, the references revealed in catalogue essays … as well as adding to it, create a sense of its insufficiency, revealing that each image is connected to larger elements and ideas.”
—Mark Godfrey, 2014
Christopher Williams, Provisional Prop, Klebelayout, hochtransparentes Zeichenpapier (Model-Nr.: 1740), 2021. Single-channel video, 31:50min. Overall dimensions variable. Edition of 10
Christopher Williams, Provisional Prop, Klebelayout, hochtransparentes Zeichenpapier (Model-Nr.: 1740), 2021. Single-channel video, 31:50min. Overall dimensions variable. Edition of 10
Learn More about Works by Christopher Williams
