Christopher Williams
For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle

The exhibition at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens is the 13th revised version of For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle, an exhibition project started in 2005 consisting of a series of photographs, combined with architectural interventions, catalogues, performances and even a temporary radio programme (namely Radio Danièle in Bologna).

Christopher Williams studied in California in the 1970’s with, among others, John Baldessari and Douglas Huebler, both pioneers of American conceptual art. The fundamental self-reflective nature of his work is rooted in the context of Conceptualism in which he studied: it is photography that deals with the photographic medium. His works are very precise photo recordings, very similar to commercial product and advertising photography. The registration is very sharp and dry, yet simultaneously ignores the function of the photographed object, making it the representation of an object that has become alienated from its meaning. The relationship between text and image is also very present in the work of Williams, he dissects the seemingly unambiguous image using comprehensive titles that give a technical description of the photograph and the photographed object.

With his exhibition title, Christopher Williams refers to sociologist Raymond Aron’s book Dix-Huit leçons sur la société industrielle (1962), a comparative study between the production processes and social structures in the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist United States. It is one of the many references with which Christopher Williams charges his work to make multiple readings of the pictures and exhibitions possible. Although at first sight it may seem very difficult to relate the various images to each other, they are all photographed in the same formal way and subsequently interpreted by the viewer. In this way, Christopher Williams creates an alienated view of the world.