Christopher Williams

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present the North American debut of *For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons sur la Société Industrielle*, a new body of work by internationally respected Los Angeles artist Christopher Williams. Williams is strongly associated with a group of Vancouver  artists known for the development of Photo Conceptualism. Like them, his approach comes out of the history of conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s, which used language and photography to  address issues related to painting and sculpture. Williams has self-consciously adopted the  production values of fine art or "straight" photography into a practice that explores sculptural  ideas using photography and installation.

*Dix-Huit Leçons* is a focused selection of photographs made using dye transfer and platinum printing techniques, processes that are rapidly becoming extinct. Williams has said that his use of such disappearing technology "is not nostalgic, or an argument against digital media per se, but an attempt to understand these processes at the moment of their disappearance." He cites three disparate historical moments as his starting point: the development of colour photography for commercial applications in the United States, the European reception of Pop Art and a body of work by Raoul Hausmann, one of the founding members of Dada Berlin, during his stay in Ibiza in the mid-1930s. Through a canny selection of subject matter, Williams allows us to see these events as part of the transformation of industrial production from a perspective that encompasses global economic and social trends.

Guest Curated by Claudia Beck

### Biography

Christopher Williams lives and works in Los Angeles. He has an extensive international exhibition history with forthcoming exhibitions at Museu Serralves, Portugal and Vienna Secession (2005) and recent solo exhibitions Wako Works of Art, Tokyo; Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne; David Zwirner, New York; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth; and Galerie Kienzle & Gmeiner, Berlin. Texts on his work have been featured in ARTFORUM, Art in America, Camera Austria International, and The New York Times. Williams is the Director of the Department of Cinema, Museum of Modern Art, Syros, Greece.

Essay: "Some References for Christopher Williams," Claudia Beck

A photograph of a pyramid-like stack of un-shucked corns. Above the corns there is a Kodak color bar.

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An install image of a photograph on a gallery wall. The photograph captures an industrial scene of machines lined up in a manufacturing firm creating one long sheet of white fabric or paper.

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An install image of two black and white photographs on a gallery wall. Both photographs show a similar image of three people in a Japanese-style room, in which floors are covered with tatami mats.

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An install image of a coloured photograph on a gallery wall. The photograph shows a pile of six corn cabs.

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An installation image of three coloured photographs on a wall. These photographs depict different sides of an old black camera.

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An installation image of two coloured photographs on gallery walls. The photograph on the right-hand side shows a yellow box. The one on the left shows the interior of a manufacturing firm.

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An installation image of two coloured photographs on gallery walls. The photograph on the right-hand side shows a pile of six corn cabs. The one on the left shows an apartment building. 

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An installation image of coloured photographs on gallery walls. Three photographs of black old cameras are on the left wall. The photograph on the right-side wall shows some round orange objects.

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For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons sur la Société Industrielle

This publication on the work of Christopher Williams was produced to coincide with his exhibition For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons sur la Société Industrielle at the Contemporary Art Gallery, January 13 – March 6, 2005. The publication, like William’s work, is part exhibition catalogue and part bookwork. It was directed by Williams and designed by Yvonne Quirmbach.
 It includes a forward by Christina Ritchie,essays “ Mechanization takes command: Modernization”, “Terminable and interminable”  by John Miller and essay “Some References for Christopher Williams” by Claudia Beck.


Christopher Williams

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