TIME TAKES TOO LONG TO LAST, 2023

solo-exhibition at Caspar-David-Friedrich-Zentrum, Greifswald, October 21-December 21, 2023.

‘Time Takes too Long to Last’ originated in observations of how time shapes our perspective on the world and leads to the question whether we can perceive time passing in a short while?

The exhibition was conceived specifically for the Caspar David Friedrich Gallery, located in a house where the romanticist painter once used to live. It extended through four rooms, of which each suggested a different sense of temporality: white cube-like spaces including works in which time seems to be put on hold were opposed to spaces characterized by site specific installations including time based media. By repeatedly intertwining and confronting the motives of the wide open sky and the curtain, taking shape in different media, the spaces oscillated between orientation and disorientation, home and anywhere. Within the extensive use of curtains, only one window was left uncovered - providing a view on the opposing window facade.

Through the combination of different series of works, the photographic process of image creation is paralleled to the imagination of the sun as a source of light projected onto the world in its rotation. Various image carriers are left blank, - white - as if overexposed, or not exposed at all. While some confront with their emptiness and demand one’s own projection; in others sunlight from outside or (artificial) images of the sky are ‘projected’ on blank screens of paper, canvas or curtains. In the context of the exhibition, windows turn into images and the other way around.These ephemeral ’images’ depict phenomena that are so essential that we barely contemplate them with enhanced awareness - such as the sun coming up and down each day, reminding us to the passage of time. Thus, the gallery space remains still. Silently, times are put on hold in the art works.