Brit Hit 24-Hour Clock Coming to New York City
Christian Marclay's video piece “The Clock,” shown at London's White Cube gallery [http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/cm/] last month, was the runaway hit of the Frieze art fair hullabaloo. From buzz on the blogs to rave reviews in print, Marclay's piece sounded like a must-see. Now it's hitting o
Christian Marclay’s video piece “The Clock,” shown at London’s White Cube gallery last month, was the runaway hit of the Frieze art fair, even though it had nothing to do with the shopping mall hullabaloo. From buzz on the blogs to rave reviews in print and through word of mouth, Marclay’s piece sounded like a must-see, and now it’s hitting our city, Artinfo reports.
What is this mysterious clock, you may ask? It’s a video that Marclay created with the help of six assistants that documents the duration of a full day minute by minute. The trick is that these minute pieces are chopped out of clips from popular movies that just happen to highlight the right time on an in-movie clock. Stills show close ups of clock towers, alarm clocks set next to bedside ashtrays, and wristwatches on elegantly clad arms.
Says Marclay of the attention-span testing piece, “If I asked you to watch a clock tick, you would get bored quickly, but there is enough action in this film to keep you entertained, so you forget the time, but then you’re constantly reminded of it.” A first person account of the installation by Rebecca Taylor testifies to the video’s entrancing powers. Also check out a Frieze magazine live-blog of Marclay’s clock.
So now the clock is coming to New York City, and will be shown at Paula Cooper gallery in January. I am super excited. The enormous amount of unanimous praise that this piece received is pretty rare in the art world, and with the support that Marclay has been getting lately (including his own Whitney festival) I’m pretty sure this is one artist that will be mounting a takeover of art world conversation come 2011. Get your watches ready and sharpen up on your blockbuster-identifying skills, Marclay’s coming to town.
