Christopher Williams

Profile

Christopher Williams is a hard guy to get a purchase on: His work is so deadpan and direct that it almost passes as not-art. Over the last two decades the Los Angeles–based artist has made this unique niche more his own, improving it in the process. This show, then, will either take your breath away or leave you going “huh?” On display: perfect photographs of cameras, portraits of camera lenses, X-rays of aquatic creatures, what looks like an ad with a model in bra and panties, and a ceiling tile that seems so unspectacular and mundane that it takes all the air out of a spectacle photographer like Andreas Gursky. Williams isn’t only getting better, in fact: These pieces suggest that he is one of the best photographic artists around now. Whether you think of his work as commercial photography or a new unnamed genre, it's a dip into a bracingly beautiful conceptual pond. — Jerry Saltz