Ohio
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Clock
Christian Marclay
01.27.2013 – 07.04.2013
Christian Marclay’s The Clock is an international sensation. A 24-hour video work that literally tells the time, The Clock features thousands of movie scenes depicting clocks, watches, and other timepieces, spliced together seamlessly. And you’ll watch the clips unfold precisely synced to our local time. Ranging from iconic movie scenes to more obscure film excerpts, The Clock includes “cameo appearances” by such stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, Charlie Chaplin, Nicole Kidman, Robert Redford, and scores of other screen stars, as they watch or talk about the time.
Dazzling in its artistic and technical virtuosity, The Clock is a remarkable feat. The New York Times calls it a “beguiling dream of eternal cinema and also a startling wake-up call,” and the New Yorker writes, “it’s one of those things you have to see.” Like Annie Leibovitz, this is an exhibition you’ll want to visit time and again.
Born in California in 1955 and raised in Switzerland, Marclay currently lives in London, England, and New York. Over the past 30 years, he has explored the fusion of visual art and sound, transforming both through performance, collage, sculpture, installation, photography, and video. Longtime Wexner Center visitors may remember that Marclay participated in New Works for New Spaces: Into the Nineties (6 October 1990-6 January 1991), the final installment of three inaugural exhibitions for the center’s newly opened galleries. Also titled The Clock, his work for that show involved 25 timer-controlled hammering mechanisms mounted on the grid of steel beams that runs the full length of the building’s exterior. In effect, Marclay turned the scaffolding into an expansive bell tower whose “chimes” sounded once every hour. The project confronted and conversed with the Wexner Center building and its neighbors and—like The Clock of 2010—challenged us to reflect on both time and methods of tracking it.
Link: Biennale di Venezia. 54. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
