A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future
November 15 - December 21, 2013
Schleicher/Lange
Berlin, Germany

Artists
Toril Johannessen, Elizabeth McAlpine, Laurent Montaron, Evariste Richer, Lisa Tan


The title of the exhibition is a precise description of the phenomenon: time, a physical, measurable variable that denotes a sequence of successions and therefore describes a clear and irreversible direction. As the fourth dimension it renders orientation in space possible.

Above all, timekeeping complements visual and geographical points of orientation for the observer, enabling us to not only know where we are, but when we are there – on a timeline that is subdivided into the precise units of years, days, and seconds. Due to it’s mono-directionality, it is bound up with transience and mortality, and our attempt to protecting us against the passage of time through memories. Memories are individual and thus play an important role in the creation of a person’s identity. In the context of society, memories serve to create history.

The perception and experience of time is subjective and different for every individual, despite the fact that it can be measured objectively using a defined scale. In theory, therefore, it is the same length for each person. Different cultures likewise have strikingly dissimilar ways of approaching time. In Western societies we tend to think of time as being a resource, or consider it as an object of value. We live with the conception that we ought to manage and use our time, and that time is something we can waste, lose or find.

All of the exhibited works from the five artists participating in this show refer to time in a different way and investigate possibilities for an alternative approach, not just to time as a theme but also to how it can be measured. They give rise to various questions, all of them taking an angle on the underlying theme: “How is it possible to represent time? Is it possible at all?”