Program. For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision I)

Edited by Karola Grässlin, Kunstverein Braunschweig
Text by Helmut Draxler

Christopher Williams’ work operates within the conventions of advertising, the superficiality of surface, and, ultimately the history of Modernism. In photography, film, performance, sculpture, graphic design, and video, the process of reproduction is the artist’s point of entry; from there he exposes the flaws in a near-perfect, carefully constructed reality. Each image, whether architectural or figurative, natural or manufactured, is subject to the conditions of production and the inevitable boundaries of the pictorial surface.

By systematically building such provocative moments into his work, Christopher Williams to an extent kick-starts the process of perception and reception and at least points it in a certain direction. This approach, which oscillates between the work itself and the process of producing it, can now also be related to the genealogy of his own artistic methods, both in relation to and in contradistinction from Rephotography and Conceptual Art. Helmut Draxler

Accompanying the same-titled exhibition at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, this fully illustrated catalogue documents the show and contains a theoretical essay by Helmut Draxler.