calendario eventi  :: 

X

18/10/2007

Taking Time

MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporanea, Vigo

With only a few weeks to go before our celebrations of the museum’s fifth anniversary on 13 November, at the MARCO we are proud to present TIEMPO AL TIEMPO / TAKING TIME, a home-produced exhibition which, to mark the event, will occupy all of the building’s spaces and which invites visitors to reflect on a central theme —the passage of time— which we believe to be particularly befitting in the context of this assessment of what these past five years have yielded.

Isabel Carlos and myself, as curators, have coincided in the need of analysing the way in which time, as the leitmotiv of the show, defines our world today. The title also refers to the history of the building that houses the MARCO, which was originally a prison, then a court of justice, before becoming an art centre. The selection of artists and works —many of which have been produced specifically for the occasion— aims to analyse our obsession with the passage of time, memory, and the meaning and burden of history. In each of the 34 visions, or interpretations, of time provided by as many artists, time is not an anecdotal circumstance but a constant presence.

With this as its leit motiv, TAKING TIME looks at the different meanings attached to the notion of time and to the diverse reflections on the subject that have shaped Western thought in such fields of knowledge as physics, literature, mathematics, and the arts. Through the ages artists and thinkers have sought to reflect their experiences of the passage of time in myriad visions, images, symbols and metaphors. It was Aristotle who stated that if human beings did not exist, neither would time; it is therefore necessary that we know how to measure it. The exhibition brings together a diversity of registers and approaches regarding what the passage of time represents and means to each artist —whether an instrument of measurement, a subject of research, a theoretical reflection, a mirror held up to the vicissitudes of society, a symbol, or an aesthetic device. These are enriched by the multiplicity of connections existing among the works which the carefully designed layout of the exhibition has sought to bring out.

From the obsessive measuring of time of On Kawara and its rendering in the calendars of Ignasi Aballí, Gianni Motti’s digital watch, the subtle vision of frozen time of Jorge Barbi’s sandglass, and the time-marking gong of Daniele Puppi, to the irony of Jimmie Durham’s petrified objects, the scientific investigations of Jorge Peris and Rubén Ramos Balsa, and the re-interpretation of art history and its symbols of Giulio Paolini, Nedko Solakov and Sam Taylor-Wood. From the fragility of memory as it evaporates in Oscar Muñoz, and the vanishing portrait of Matthew Buckingham’s horse-mounted hero to the preservation of memories in Pedro Mora. From the evocation of past time in the work of Ana Jotta to the nostalgia of the future of Jonathan Monk and the moving encounter of past and present through the word in Lani Maestro. Unproductive, or ‘dead’, time, as depicted by Mircea Cantor to Igor y Svetlana Kopystiansky’s fractured narrative; Rosângela Rennó’s generation of movement in static images, Euan Macdonald’s snail advancing on the sand in a psychological image of the passage of time, and the temporal and spatial cross-section of Tatsuo Miyajima’s universe. Tacita Dean’s relationship between image, sound and spatial installation and the poetry of Nam June Paik’s moon phases. The theoretical reflections on space and time of Victor Burgin and Douglas Gordon, the use of signs as narrative of Allen Ruppersberg, and the portrait represented by objects of Mark Dion. Time travellers of the lost world of Susan Norrie, the recovery of masterpieces and documents from the past of Fernando Bryce, the literary references and humour of João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, and the synthesis of detained time and decadence of William Eggleston. The sense, too, or presence, of time through action: from Gustavo Romano’s exchange mechanisms to David Lamelas’ historical performance piece, Time, which will be presented in Vigo on the occasion of the exhibition’s opening.

In this particular ‘measurement’ we aim to establish a past, present, and future — a temporal sequence that frames our assessment of the MARCO’s history to date as well as our expectations for the years to come.

Iñaki Martínez Antelo
Director of MARCO and curator of the exhibition

Artists:

Allen Ruppersberg
Ana Jotta
Daniele Puppi
David Lamelas
Douglas Gordon
Euan Macdonald
Fernando Bryce
Gianni Motti
Giulio Paolini
Gustavo Romano
Ignasi Aballi'
Igor Kopystiansky
Svetlana Kopystiansky
Jimmie Durham
Joao Maria Gusmao
Pedro Paiva
Jonathan Monk
Jorge Barbi
Jorge Peris
Lani Maestro
Mark Dion
Matthew Buckingham
Mircea Cantor
Nam June Paik
Nedko Solakov
On Kawara
Oscar Munoz
Pedro Mora
Rosangela Renno'
Ruben Ramos Balsa
Sam Taylor-Wood
Susan Norrie
Tacita Dean
Tatsuo Miyajima
Victor Burgin
William Eggleston


CATALOGUE
Accompanying the exhibition, the MARCO of Vigo is bringing out a catalogue that contains presentational texts written by the curators as well as an essay by Félix Duque, entitled ‘A vueltas con el tiempo’, biographical notes about the artists, and pictures of their works. So that photographs of those works that have been produced specifically for the event can be included, the catalogue will not come out until a fortnight after the opening.

Organized by:
MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo

Curator/s
Isabel Carlos e Iñaki Martínez Antelo

Image: Sam Taylor-Wood

Rúa Príncipe, 54 36202 Vigo
Opening Times:
Tuesday to Saturday (including holidays), from 11 am to 9 pm. Sunday from 11 am to 3 pm

stampa

permanent link