Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, University of Chicago
February 8–April 19, 2024
Radio / Rauhfaser / Television offers a provisional summation of Christopher Williams’s ongoing research into contemporary mutations of social realism. The exhibition is centered in part on the politically engaged theater of the German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz. Williams recently recorded Kroetz’s 1971 radio play Inklusive using vintage audio equipment from both East and West Germany, and the play will be broadcast on Chicago’s Lumpen Radio (105.5 FM) at several points during the show’s run. The strong sense of class consciousness in Kroetz’s work is hinted at in Williams’s use of Rauhfaser, an archetypal brand of German wallpaper that serves as scenographic shorthand for a proletarian aesthetic. A single photograph and two hand-painted glass signs hang in the gallery alongside video footage and historical documents displayed in six purpose-built vitrines. Its modest scale notwithstanding, the exhibition has an almost manifesto-like quality to it, outlining both Williams’s overarching intellectual passions—an interrogation of the way in which our visual culture is both staged and seen—and the timeless question of art’s relation to societal questions.
Learn more at the Neubauer Collegium.