Shaping Time

Our perception of time is highly subjective. We experience time as a continuum, as an interval, or even as a memory. The passage of time, perceived as accelerating in the modern era, for many of us slowed dramatically in these last two years of the pandemic. The feeling of time racing by, of our continual struggle almost against time, was replaced by a sense of time stretching out and an expansive present.

The artists in this exhibition employ photographic techniques – and this includes film – for their study of the world in which we live and how we perceive time. On the one hand, photography, as a recording medium, makes it possible to capture the reality of a moment in time. On the other hand, a photographic image always refers to something else, to something past, which is why we understand it as a tool of memory. In Andreas Duscha’s work, the medium of photography is used to measure actual time by means of a so-called flower clock. In Anja Ronacher's photo series The Unnamable, the technique of photography accomplishes the task of traversing unimaginable spans of time. The implosion of time is denoted by the defunct display of a digital clock in Günther Selichar´s photopgraph. Peter Köllerer uses photography to address issues of form in sculpture and relates them to the question of authenticity and identity in virtual space in the series NAMES. In Eva Schlegel's work, the figure fades both out of focus and out of the temporal context in which it was created, while in Julie Monaco’s work, the digital construction of landscapes completely negates any temporal attribution and conveys the aesthetic quality of photography without actually being photography.

On view will be works from the Belvedere's collection as well as from the Artothek des Bundes by Andreas Duscha, Peter Köllerer, Julie Monaco, Anja Ronacher, Ugo Rondinone, Eva Schlegel and Günther Selichar.

Curated by Stella Rollig and Harald Krejci.