In his new exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery in east London, Christopher Williams breaks all the rules. For a start, some of the walls have been flown in from his recent show in Germany–and the captions on the works are from the Whitechapel's previous show, Adventures of the Black Square. The confusion these now-random captions cause for the viewer are as integral to the exhibition as the hanging of the prints, which tend to be well below the average eyeline. It's all emblematic of Williams' somewhat dogged conceptual thrust, and the attendant, seemingly willful, elusiveness of his work.
Born in Los Angeles in 1956, Williams came of age as a student at CalArts in the 1970s, where he was taught by playful conceptualist John Baldessari. If it seems that Baldessari's mischievous spirit informs the work of many younger photographers these days, Williams has long since condensed that spirit into a formal exploration of the medium and, in particular, its deployment in advertising. He uses photography to draw our attention to photography: what it is, what it does and what it means at a time when it is so ubiquitous and seductive.