The Museum Morsbroich presents Christopher Williams. For Example: Dix-Huit Lecons Sur La Societe Industrielle (Revision 15) an exhibition on view 4 December 2011–12 February 2012.
Christopher Williams Bergische Bauernscheune, Junkersholz, Leichlingen September 29th, 2009 2010 Courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Köln
The exhibition “Christopher Williams. For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 15)” comprises more than 20 photographic works by this artist, who was born in Los Angeles in 1956. The presentation at Museum Morsbroich, which alludes to the book Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Industrial Society: 18 lessons, 1964) by Raymond Aron published in France in 1962, is part of an exhibition series which the artist began in 2005 and has since continued consistently in the most diverse international institutions and museums.
The exhibition combines new works, and some which are being shown for the first time in Germany, with older photographs which are already part of the body of 18 lessons. The arrangement of the works takes into account the particularity of the respective exhibition venue. An essential importance is attributed to the exhibition site and thus the space itself, the installation. The artist’s considerations include an engagement with the conditions of the presentation, the context as well as the means and framework conditions of the whole exhibition business. The rhetoric of the installation in Schloss Morsbroich uses a very minimalist idiom. The staged link between the works emerges through the sequence of the rooms.
Christopher Williams’ artistic approach is guided by conceptual principles that point up his roots in the tradition of American conceptualism, as represented by Michael Asher, Douglas Huebler or John Baldessari, under whom he studied at the CalArts (California Institute of the Arts). Williams’ photographic-theoretical considerations touch on epistemological processes as well as, immanently, on the conditions of art production or of institutional criticism.
Curator of the Christopher Williams exhibition is Stefanie Kreuzer.
Museum Morsbroich
Gustav-Heinemann-Strasse 80
D-51377 Leverkusen
Germany
www.museum-morsbroich.de