SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- John Berggruen Gallery presents The Time is Now, a group exhibition featuring Doug Aitken, Darren Almond, Diane Arbus, Richard Artschwager, Michael Craig-Martin, Hans Peter-Feldmann, Lee Friedlander, Philip Guston, Jasper Johns, Karen Kilimnik, Vera Lutter, Christian Marclay, Tom McKinley, Tin Ojeda, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Linda Ridgway, Ugo Rondinone, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Stephen Shore, Taryn Simon and Lawrence Weiner.
The Time is Now brings together a group of works that acknowledge and contend with the representation of time (past, present and future), and how it is reinterpreted and revealed across diverse media. Through drawing, sculpture, installation, sound and light this exhibition illustrates the continuing human fascination with exploring the concept of time, both in the metaphysical and physical sense. This exhibition evades easy classification, with each artist bringing their own experience to one of the oldest topics that defies the typical social, cultural and political context.
In its most literal sense, the clock serves as a common allegorical image to convey how we calculate the presence of time within our lives. Philip Guston’s colorful, almost whimsical portrait of a timepiece shows the city below, dwarfed and eventually crushed by the presence of a large clock. For a more abstract representation, there is Doug Aitken’s lightbox depicting a beautiful island vista glimpsed simply through the ominous word “END.” Both of these images speak directly to the fear underlying every artist’s curiosity and obsession with the progression of time.
Another interesting element is the effect of the passage of time on the work itself. In 1967, Lee Friedlander was documenting everyday American life, while today his snapshot of a television in “Aloha, Washington,” is an artifact, depicting obsolete technology rendering his image to a specific period within our history. This overarching theme is segmented even further as the work featured stretches from the early 1960’s to present day, created by artists both living and dead born between 1913 and 1982.
Grouped together, all of these images display the impulse to transcend our inevitable circumstances and capture or define the ultimate progression of time, an unstoppable force. The result is a group show that circumnavigates the expectations of typical group shows, turning the viewer into part of the experience, by reminding us all of the importance of each passing minute.
