Photographer Christopher Williams explores ’The Production Line of Happiness’ at MoMA, New York
Conceptual artist Christopher Williams’ first retrospective is now on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York - but don’t tell him that. 'I’m uncomfortable with the term conceptual artist, but I’m equally uncomfortable with the idea that I’m a photographer,' he says. 'Also I was incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of a survey or retrospective.'
Coming from another artist, such statements could be taken as pure contrarianism, deployed to shield, wedge, distance, or simply whine, but for Williams they are a way to reset expectations and invite the viewer into the cross-disciplinary territory he has spent the last 35 years conquering. It is a terrain populated with photographic artifacts (cutaway cameras, Kodak color guides) and glossy ideals (apples, soap, attractive women) that are so slightly and precisely askew, vexing even as they delight. Out of analogue serial production he coaxes endless parallels.
At 58, Los Angeles-born Williams has the easygoing yet brainy charm of a teacher - and he is, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he followed Bernd Becher into the role of professor of photography. He compares himself to the magnifying bubble on his iPhone. 'You can move that little bubble around to enlarge images and words, and I think that’s what I do,' he says. 'Instead of being locked behind the camera, I move around. I’m often beside the camera, never in front of the camera, sometimes behind the camera. And I’m as much a photographer as I am a picture editor and a graphic designer.'
The full range of Williams’ practice is represented at MoMA, where 100 photographs - hung low and spaced generously, as if to allow room for their unwieldy titles - are joined by video and film works as well as what the museum describes as 'architectural interventions'. Williams looked to that last category as a way to eschew the inherently backward-looking nature of a retrospective.
The exhibition begins with striking red graphics taken from the show’s previous incarnation at the Art Institute of Chicago. It follows with wall fragments from previous MoMA exhibitions (including the recent Magritte blockbuster, entitled 'The Mystery of the Ordinary'), and finishes by looking forward, via a cinderblock wall, to the retrospective’s spring 2015 outing at Whitechapel Gallery.
'This is an exhibition that redefines the idea of montage, both montage in space - as here photography has been expanded into architecture and as a form of installation art - but also a montage of so many ideas within a single picture frame,' says MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci, who describes Williams as 'a cinephilic artist with a Brechtian flair for quotation'.
For all of the layered complexity and bold non sequiturs of Williams’ work, there is plenty of pure enjoyment to be had in 'The Production Line of Happiness' (a title borrowed from a Jean-Luc Godard documentary) and in the accompanying catalogue-cum-artist’s book. A few steps away from the photo of a 1964 Renault balanced on its side there is a close-up of a pair of beetles (the insects, not the cars) flipped on their backs in surrender.
And when it comes to portraits, the human subjects are distinctively joyful. 'If you look at the work of many of my colleagues, nobody’s smiling. Photography and conceptual art is a very serious business,' says Williams. 'So I thought, I have to find a space to have a position - smiling is maybe the area I can work in.'
ADDRESS
MoMA
11 West 53 Street
New York
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
-
Remembering Richard Serra (1938-2024), American art’s man of steel
American artist Richard Serra, whose vast sculptures transformed landscapes around the world, has died aged 85
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Architectural gardens around the world to soothe the soul
From small domestic gardens, to nature reserves, urban interventions and local parks, here are some of the finest green projects that place nature at their heart
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Corfu hotel Domes Miramare redefines beachfront bliss
Make like Jackie O at Corfu hotel Domes Miramare, a property with contemporary luxury and echoes of 1960s glamour in spades
By Bridget Downing Published
-
‘LA Gun Club’: artist Jane Hilton on who’s shooting who
‘LA Gun Club’, an exhibition by Jane Hilton at New York’s Palo Gallery, explores American gun culture through a study of targets and shooters
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Detroit Institute of Arts celebrates Black cinema
‘Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971’ at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) brings lost or forgotten films, filmmakers and performers to a contemporary audience
By Anne Soward Published
-
BLUM marks 30 years of Japanese contemporary art in America
BLUM will take ‘Thirty Years: Written with a Splash of Blood’ to its New York space in September 2024, continuing its celebration of Japanese contemporary art in America
By Timothy Anscombe-Bell Published
-
Todd Gray’s sculptural photography collages defy dimension, linearity and narrative
In Todd Gray’s New York exhibition, he revisits his 40-year archive, fragmented into elaborated frames that open doors for new readings
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Frieze LA 2024 guide: the art, gossip and buzz
Our Frieze LA 2024 guide includes everything you need to know and see in and around the fair
By Renée Reizman Published
-
New York artist Christopher Astley showcases an alternative natural world
At Martos Gallery in New York, Christopher Astley’s paintings evoke an alternative natural world and the chaos of warfare (until 16 March 2024)
By Tianna Williams Published
-
The Whitney plots Harold Cohen’s artistic AI adventures
‘Harold Cohen: AARON’, at the Whitney Museum of American Art celebrates the artist’s software – the earliest AI program for artmaking – as an artwork in its own right
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Ludovic Nkoth’s vibrant paintings reflect on migration
Cameroon-born, New York-based Ludovic Nkoth uses acrylic paint to strike a balance between abstraction and figuration
By Ugonna-Ora Owoh Published