All the time that came before this moment

Curated by Katharina Dunst and Jean-Claude Freymond-Guth

The exhibition All the time that came before this moment at Kunst Raum Riehen deals with the phenomena of time and its individual experience.

Time is a universal quantity and measurable unit, no one can escape it, it is undisputedly there and is considered a binding measure, although the perception of time is unique to each individual. Depending on the situation, time can trickle slowly, rush away fleetingly like mercury or stand still in an infinite instant.

The works of Jenny Rova, Bojan Šarčević and David Horvitz focus on time and the way it makes itself felt in our lives. The invited artists talk about the universal and individual aspects of time in a personal way. They move backwards and forwards along the time axis and, by walking or standing still, try to give an image to the unavoidable dimension that determines life.

A recent work by Bojan Šarčević evokes the memory of an abandoned place. Three buzzing, empty ice chests in the room suggest that someone was just there. Nothing is preserved in the chests, the ice grows and provides an image of freezing itself and of the attempt to hold something against the passage of time. From time to time, torn pieces of music can be heard, providing a soundtrack to the mood of the recent past.

David Horvitz is present in Kunst Raum Riehen with three works. With All the time that will come after this moment, a neon sign, the second part of which lends its title to the exhibition, the artist from California evokes two characteristics of time. On the one hand, duration and on the other, the moment. Just as the horizon constantly redefines the boundaries of perceptible space when we walk, the past or future also moves, with the difference that we cannot move towards time in the same way that we cannot move towards place. Is the past therefore unchangeable? This question has already provided material for many books and films and perhaps the intervention in time lies at the origin of cultural action. In any case, David Horvitz throws seeds onto a very special ground in a work that is also on display, allowing us to look into the future.

Jenny Rova offers us another look back in photographic portraits of herself taken by her partners or lovers. The nostalgic and often intimate pictures are of ten different people; they are arranged chronologically and begin with the first snapshot taken when Rova was just 19 years old. The whole series can be seen as a biographical account, an indirect portrait of the invisible photographer, but also as an attempt to capture the gaze shaped by love and thus to understand something that takes place between two people.