January 21 – February 19, 2011
Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 W. 21st Street

Living in New York City can mean a relentless round of activities—coffee dates, lunches, dinner engagements, art openings and parties stack up three, four and five deep, and the demands of school and work easily roll over into the midnight hours. Enter the US premiere of Christian Marclay’s new twenty-four-hour video work, The Clock, now screening at the Paula Cooper Gallery. Stitched together out of thousands of feet of found film footage, the video’s ostensible subject is the clocks, watches and other time pieces that are shown and referred to in the onscreen narrative. The found footage keeps pace in virtual time with the march of “real” time over a twenty four hour period: when a watch shows 3:52pm on screen, it is 3:52pm in the Paula Cooper Gallery. This creates an uncanny slippage between the virtual action and your actual experience.

So set aside some time. If you can stand it, experiment with leaving your Blackberry or your iPhone at home. Let your friends know where you’re headed. But above all, luxuriate in the possibility that in a city where the lack of time is a prized commodity, it’s possible to disappear for twenty-four hours—or thirty-six, if you are so inclined—into a consideration of the same.

WEEKDAY SCREENINGS:

Tuesdays – Thursdays, 10am – 6pm

24-HOUR WEEKEND SCREENINGS:
Friday January 28, 10am – Saturday January 29, 6pm
Friday February 4, 10am – Saturday February 5, 6pm
Friday February 11, 10am – Saturday February 12, 6pm
Friday February 18, 10am – Saturday February 19, 6pm

For more information, please visit: http://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/497

-Margot Bouman, Assistant Professor in Visual Culture Studies