The Upcoming
  • Culture
    • Art
    • Cinema
      • Movie reviews
      • Film festivals
    • Food & Drinks
      • News & Features
      • Restaurant & bar reviews
      • Interviews & Recipes
    • Literature
    • Music
      • Live music
    • Theatre
    • Shows & On demand
  • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
  • What’s On
    • Art exhibitions
    • Theatre shows
  • Tickets
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Interviews
  • Competitions
  • Special events
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureArt

Christopher Williams at David Zwirner Gallery

Christopher Williams at David Zwirner Gallery | Exhibition review
18 May 2013
Eleanor MacFarlane
Avatar
Eleanor MacFarlane
18 May 2013

Christopher Williams is an artist who declares he is not interested in creation or self-expression. The conceptual artist and photographer is solely concerned with ideas and research and leaves the analysing and explaining of work to others.

The Upcoming was treated to the artist giving a talk about his exhibition in the gallery, revealing the thinking behind his images – the themes of Cold War Germany from the 50s to the 80s, and what can be extrapolated about society from camera manuals, industrial technology and issues of hygiene at a time when soap was a luxury product.

For Example is drawn from continuing work over the past decade on similar themes. As photography the production is excellent, the detail revealing more the closer you look. As an exhibition it is has a less coherent feel without one unifying idea, and reads more as a selection of recent works.

With no titles or explanation within the gallery, the exhibition is difficult to decipher without the artist there filling in the back stories. The cameras shown in photographs, recreating images from their manuals, are unusually left-handed, but it takes pointing out to notice. Highly staged, these photos mimic instruction manuals, and manage to draw visual parallels between the fingers and the camera mechanisms.

Nominated last year in London for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012, Williams is a big name on the international art scene, part of a second wave of conceptual artists to emerge in America in the 70s. His work examines photography by considering how photography objectifies anything in front of a camera, and by looking at cameras themselves, including dissected lenses: “Sometimes you can only appreciate beauty by cutting something in half.”

His photographs have layers of meaning – images of shop units are displaying the vehicle for displaying, and so on. Williams’s art benefits from mediation and explanation, and much of the concept is lost in looking at the imagery alone. It’s interesting work and there are interesting ideas, but you do have to read up about it to know what you are looking at.

★★★★★

Eleanor MacFarlane

Christopher Williams: For Example is at David Zwirner Gallery until 15th June 2013. For further information visit the gallery’s website here.

Study in Yellow and Green East Berlin © Christopher Williams
Related Itemsreview

More in Art

Ten artistic depictions of the Christmas story through the ages

James White
Read More

Five gifts for art lovers this Christmas

Emma-Jane Betts
Read More

Five alternative art exhibitions for Christmas 2020

Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s Adoration at the National Gallery

★★★★★
Anna Souter
Read More

Ben Uri Gallery and Museum: The evolution of a force for good

James White
Read More

Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch: The Loneliness of the Soul at the Royal Academy

★★★★★
Anna Souter
Read More

Magnetic North: Voices from the Indigenous Arctic at the British Museum

★★★★★
Samuel Nicholls
Read More

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly in League with the Night at Tate Britain

★★★★★
Jessica Wall
Read More

Rob and Nick Carter on Connaught Village’s public neon installations: “Accessibility of art is crucial during a pandemic”

Lilly Subbotin
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap
  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Arlo Parks – Collapsed in Sunbeams
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Green stars, two female chefs at the top and a controversially quick award: This is 2021 UK Michelin Guide during the pandemic
    Food & Drinks
  • The Capote Tapes
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • The Dig
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • Swimming Home: An immersive online experience
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Win a DVD bundle of House of Sand and Fog, Away From Her and Young Adam
    Competitions
  • Crobar: Music When the Lights Go Out
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • Six books perfect for beating the winter blues
    Fashion & Lifestyle
  • Green stars, two female chefs at the top and a controversially quick award: This is 2021 UK Michelin Guide during the pandemic
    Food & Drinks
  • Assassins: Exclusive new clip
    Cinema
  • Green stars, two female chefs at the top and a controversially quick award: This is 2021 UK Michelin Guide during the pandemic
    Food & Drinks
  • Identifying Features
    ★★★★★
    Uncategorised
  • Arlo Parks – Collapsed in Sunbeams
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Identifying Features
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • We Still Fax at ANTS Theatre Online
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Estuary at Museum of London Docklands | Exhibition review
Guards at Birthdays, Dalston | Live review