Christopher Williams

New York: 525 West 19th Street

The history of photography as art in the 20th century has largely been the history of the book and the illustrated magazine. An exemplary figure here would be Walker Evans, whose magazine work from the 1920s through the 1970s serves as a useful catalyst for thinking about the new exhibition of Christopher Williams. In this, his seventh exhibition with David Zwirner, Christopher Williams presents an essay in walls and pictures, a display of five or six observational or descriptive models.

To be quite frank, while writing this text I found myself completely at a loss for words, and turned to the gallery’s vast database to look for information about the work of Christopher Williams. Sifting through the stupefyingly repetitive material, I found this description of one of the artist’s newer photographs: “This photograph depicts an American Tourister brand suitcase aboard an Interflug flight from Berlin to Algiers on Sunday, August 28, 1983. Interflug was the national airline of East Germany during the Cold War era. While its destinations included Western countries, the majority of the countries it served were socialist states or within the Eastern Bloc.” This, I guess, is as good of a start as any.

Also on display will be the artist’s new publication Printed in Germany, a condensed, wordless essay using the materials of graphic design and book production (repetition, scale, placement, pagination, binding, etc.). On the occasion of the exhibition, David Zwirner will publish the fifth installment of the artist’s publications entitled Program, which has been accompanying his exhibitions over the past three years. This publication will include visual and textual information by Christopher Williams and a newly commissioned text by the artist Josef Strau.