'About Time' at Maddox Arts
3 April – 31 May '14
London
Maddox Arts is delighted to present About Time, a group exhibition curated by Laura Culpan, bringing together artists who use very diverse medium within their practice, but for the occasion are united by the concept of Time.
Time is a strange thing... that is, if you take the time to think about it. Properly. We try to control it, to quantify it, to keep it, to lose track of it, to make it stand still. It flies by. Sometimes.
In this exhibition the viewer will be invited to take their time to consider time, with this selection of international artists using different approaches from the poetic to the scientific and from the literal to the conceptual: it is About Time.
Time is quantified in a visual manner in Cuban artist Glenda León’s evocative installation Wasted Time, that sees the hourglass overflow to a mound of uncontainable sand and in United Visual Artists’ light installation Always Never inspired by the form of a sundial, it generates a mesmerizing flow of shadow created by light that is controlled by the digital passage of virtual time: in this work it is as if you are seeing the daylight hours synchronized, simultaneous and delicately animated before you.
The process of time features in Colombian artist Miler Lagos’ careful and painstakingly (not to mention time-consumed) constructed newspaper collages and sculpture that seemingly reverse the process of production from end material (The Times newspaper) back to source material (trees) in a conceptual and visual way whilst at the heart of Troika’s sculptural dice ‘drawings’ it is the element of the time that it takes for the patterns and behaviours of the dice to emerge, that defines the aesthetic outcome of the contained ‘drawings’.
The subject of time is approached within painting in two very different ways, from Cuban artist Iván Capote’s bold juxtaposition and quasi-optical illusion that plays with words ‘Past’ and ‘Future’ in such a way that contrasts and superimposes them. Which is stronger, which is more powerful, which one informs the other? In ‘Metronome’ Paul Huxley’s painting from the 1970s the metronome is the abstracted subject matter that suggests balance, rhythm and also the controlling and ‘keeping’ of time, whilst acknowledging the art historical references within Cubism both in the choice of the subject matter and its depiction and abstraction on the canvas.
Finally, in Bill Viola’s work, time is manipulated and slowed down in such a way that you, the viewer, are forced to join his pace: you cannot rush a Bill Viola work.
In our high-speed contemporary visual culture, where images are thrown at you in every available digital and non-digital way, it is somewhat refreshing to be forced to slow down and take a moment to consider and experience what it is you are seeing, and with the exhibition
Maddox Arts
52 Brook's Mews
London W1K 4ED
United Visual Artists 'Always/Never' 2012 Powder Coated Steel, Timber, Transmissive Colour film, LED Code Variable dimensions
United Visual Artists 'Always/Never' (Detail) 2012 Powder Coated Steel, Timber, Transmissive Colour film, LED Code Variable dimensions
Troika Hierophany 3 2014 black and white dice 70 x 90 cm
Troika Hierophany 2 2014 black and white dice 70 x 90 cm
Paul Huxley Metronome 1979 acrylic on linen 203.2 x 203.2
