The Track of Time, Part II

Two-part exhibition with the Summer Academy co-teachers

22–31 August 2019 / 7–8 pm CEST

This year’s exhibition in the periscope project space brings together positions dealing with possibilities and strategies for depicting time – whether by means of latent, almost unnoticed traces of time-measurement, by visualisation of time processes and mechanisms, or by representation of a fading memory as an attempt to counteract the passing of time.

Elina Saalfeld, for instance, visited her grandmother, who had become dependent on care, so that the second floor of the house was no longer much in use. The inventory seemed frozen in time there. After nightfall, in order to measure time past, the artist coated the back of the pictures on the walls with a solution used for cyanotype, an old photographic process, and returned them to their places. Light incidence behind a picture, though very low, does occur; but how much time has passed can be seen only when the picture is removed from the wall, revealing the chemical process.

Gleb Amankulov, on the other hand, painted a picture every day for a month, using only the simplest materials such as chalk and water, always on the same kind of sandpaper and never working on them for more than two hours. This concept originated as a revolt against the art training system in post-Soviet Belarus, which had obliged him to spend two years working as a teacher. The present work is a kind of calendar documenting each day – the same tools used, yet each picture different.

These two positions and others will be on show in the exhibition.

Curated by Simone Rudolph

With Ines Hochgerner, Elina Saalfeld and others.