Salty Lemons

gallery visitors waiting in line to see Christian Marclay's "The Clock"
Chelsea Gallery District, NY from my 2011 archive

February 12, 2011

"The Clock"

Recently, The Swede and I have been hearing from friends and reading in the media that Christian Marclay's piece, "The Clock" is a must not miss New York art event. It is showing at a gallery in the Chelsea Gallery District.

The Swede and I plus our artist friend ventured to Chelsea to check it out (brrr, it was a chilly day and very light flurries started to fall). We arrived fairly early on a Saturday morning and the usual amount of people were cruising around to visit galleries. We spotted the line from afar but were not sure what people were doing in a line (not typical for a gallery show). We waited twenty-five minutes just to get in the door to wait another ten minutes in line before entering the expansive room where the video was playing. We watched "The Clock" in real time from 1:15-1:45pm. There was no time limit but we had a tight schedule and other shows to see.

I have to say that "The Clock" is quite a feat. It is a 24-hour video montage including audio. As an artist (or not), it is impossible to see this piece and not think about the process of its making. Marclay uses thousands of excerpts of film footage to illustrate the passage of time using snippets of clocks, watches, alarm clocks, and the list goes on and on. The segments span all decades and genres of film. The film also happens in real time (verified it with my cell phone) meaning that around lunchtime the actors/actresses in the piece may be having lunch too and when a clock in the film says 1:15pm, it really is 1:15pm. I will try to go back to see another segment of it, preferably some time at night. I spoke with a woman in line for the restroom (YES! Paula Cooper Gallery has a restroom that you can use which is rare/non-existent and when you live in NY you become overly concerned about where the restrooms are that you can use) that watched the video from 2:00-3:00am on Saturday morning. She mentioned there was still a line at those early hours!

Upon exiting, I spotted Kara Walker (with her daughter) waiting in the front of the line about to enter the viewing room. This is the second Kara Walker sighting for me, the other was at her own show opening with Mark Bradford at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. I did meet Mark Bradford at that opening but lost my nerve to meet her. Arturo Herrera is also represented by that same gallery and has a show up now, check it out. More on Arturo some other time.

archives: Art