28 march 2023, Flor Linckens
Take Your Time: a group exhibition about time at AKINCI
Until 8 April, AKINCI in Amsterdam is presenting a group exhibition with a central subject: time. These works are about experiencing time, but also about the time you take as a viewer to absorb the content of a work.
Time has been a rewarding subject for artists for centuries. Think of representations of skulls, soap bubbles and wilting flowers as a symbol of transience or the melting ice of Olafur Eliasson or the melting clocks of Salvador Dalí. Or the two unevenly burning candles from Elmgreen & Dragset — which refer to the age difference between the two makers — or Félix González-Torres' clocks that are ticking at the same time, an ode to his deceased partner. Besides that, there is of course time-based art, based on video, audio, animation or performance. An example is the "Time Clock Piece" by Tehching Hsieh, who clocked in every hour for a year in 1980-1981 and immortalised that moment with a photo.
In the exhibition at AKINCI, you can see two versions of the installation "Jingle" (2012 and 2021) by Cevdet Erek, which consists of a table with eight or nine hand-blown glasses each — one of which contains remnants of the Turkish drink ayran —, an iPod and a series of associative sounds. The shape of the glasses in the latest version refers to cow and sheep bells and in the sound you can hear the artist tapping against glass as well as goats in the distance. Together, they evoke an association of landscapes full of cattle. The 2012 version was shown at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, among others.
Stéphanie Saadé shows several works including "Building a Home with Time" (2019), which consists of a long beaded string with 2832 beads, which refers to the number of days between the artist's birth and the end of the Lebanese Civil War. In addition, you can see her work "Family Circle" (2022), a canvas with three hairs connected in a circle: the hair of the artist in connection with that of her mother and her daughter, three generations.
Andrei Roiter tries to capture a specific moment in his work, the precise moment when something begins or ends. With "Spotlight" (2022), AKINCI shows a breakthrough moment in a literal sense: we see a wall in which a hole has been carved. Behind it hides a mysterious stage with a closed theater curtain. As a viewer, you wonder where you ended up: is something about to happen here?
In "Museum {Bear)" (2023) Zbigniew Rogalski paints a bear skull in a museum display case. He adds an extra layer, the reflection of the glass. This offers the bear an even more timeless character, while the moment at which the object is viewed is captured in time quite precisely. In "My Collection (Araki)" (2023) he paints the passing clouds as a symbol of the passage of time. The works in this series are based on the works of famous photographers and artists.
Molly Palmer's works often move in the world of time-based media: from sculptural film sets to choreography. In this exhibition at AKINCI she shows "Glyphs" (2020), a reference to Mayan culture and an investigation into the ways in which emotion can be captured in language.
