Working directly on the structure of the building, Williams will allow the visitor to have access to it through the original museum entrance and, by a balanced interplay of additions and removals, he will partially rediscover the itineraries, disposition of masses, explanatory structures and original outlay as they were at the time the museum was opened (May 1st, 1975).
In the galleries themselves, but also in the old entrance lobby, the corridors and the service areas normally closed to the public, the artist’s works will outline the course of a unique journey “backwards in time”.
By documenting the progressive transformations of the Gallery, designed by architect Leone Pancaldi adjacent to the pavilions of the Bologna Fair, the artist puts into mutual relationship the present and the past of the institution, its imminent closure with the events which politically motivated its creation and accompanied its inauguration, enabling these two opposite events – inauguration and closure – as it were to discourse between themselves, and almost merging the one with the other.
In his photographs, videos, films, installations, sculptures and performances Christopher Williams analyses the complex and stratified mechanisms by means of which contemporary communication and aesthetic conventions structure our ways of perceiving and understanding reality.
Conceived independently by the artist and dedicated to the memory of the French film director Danièle Huillet (1936-2006), a play list project curated by Williams and John Kelsey (Radio Danièle) will be broadcast throughout the period of the exhibition by Città del Capo – Radio Metropolitana.