Au musée Guggenheim New York
April 10–July 19, 2009
www.guggenheim.org/new-york
" Intervals is a new contemporary art series designed to
reflect the spirit of today’s most innovative practices. Conceived to
take place in interstitial spaces or beyond the physical confines of
the building, the program invites a diverse range of artists to create
new work for a succession of solo presentations. Intervals is
inaugurated with a multipart installation by Julieta Aranda (b. 1975,
Mexico City) that activates the museum’s triangular staircase.
Challenging the perception of time as a linear progression marked
by clocks and other systems, these works propose an alternative notion
of temporal experience as a shifting and unquantifiable state. A
peephole near the staircase reveals the image of an hourglass, a
traditional symbol of mortality. Viewed through the refracting optical
device of a camera obscura, the grains of sand appear to flow upward in
a startling reversal of time’s passage. Nearby, patches of paint on the
walls recall the look of covered-up street graffiti. Using
phosphorescent paint, Aranda has transcribed quotations about time
drawn from sources that span more than 2,000 years. The words become
visible only when the space is periodically darkened.
One floor above, Aranda has installed an oversized clock in which
the day is divided into 10 elongated hours. This system references
decimal time, a short-lived initiative introduced during the
rationalizing fervor of the French Revolution that reorganized the day
into 10 hours, containing 100 minutes of 100 seconds each. While the
clock pays homage to this act of iconoclasm, the movement of the second
hand represents an entirely subjective experience of time,
corresponding directly to the fluctuating rate of the artist’s own
heartbeat over the course of one day. In an accompanying sound piece, a
transistor radio emits a recording of this heart rate, suggesting the
nuanced tempo of human experience."