NO TIME
BEYOND TIME
A specific element of my work is the ambiguous concept of time. On one hand, prehistoric hominids; on the other, contemporary lines in painting or sculpture.
This year, while visiting Suwałki, walking through its authentic market and staying at the Pokamedulski Monastery in Wigry—a place that initiated the development of this area, acted as the founder and owner of the city, and now serves as a withdrawn observer suspended above time—I felt that Suwałki and my works share a common denominator: a different time.
Time is the foundation of our civilization. It is so deeply ingrained in our daily lives that we no longer question it. A blessing and a burden. We organize our lives with it, yet almost everyone feels they lack it.
The role of an artist is often to challenge axioms, shift perspectives, turn things upside down, disrupt the system, and search through such actions. Personally, I am very interested in moving within this avant-garde space. The controversy surrounding time became the idea behind this exhibition.
While working on this project and reading about time, I learned that it is not entirely indisputable, as commonly believed. According to modern science, time began to flow 13.8 billion years ago; it supposedly did not exist before that. There is also time dilation, meaning time, according to physicists, is relative and dependent on speed (observable at very high velocities).
Can we slow it down, speed it up, or stop it?
GUIDED TOUR OF THE EXHIBITION
THE REVERSED WATCHMAKER
At the vernissage, I will offer the service of the Reversed Watchmaker. Anyone interested can hand over their watch, and I will gladly adjust the time, remove the hour or minute hand, or even saw the watch in half. I guarantee that the service will be performed thoroughly. The watch will remain broken and will not repair itself for at least 12 months! During the exhibition, visitors will also have the chance to use provided tools to damage their own watches. How will this action affect time and us? I am curious myself! I invite you to join in this playful, observational, and contemplative activity.
For the project, I created the NO TIME watch brand. All timepieces are broken and show the wrong time.
The aspect of irony and mischief is close to me, though rarely seen in art. This project is also a retrospective action, a journey back to childhood. As a child, I passionately disassembled all my mechanical toys. I was fascinated by their inner workings and understanding how things functioned. Working on the NO TIME watches allowed me to return to that world. That is why I am pleased to announce that, together with the Stara Łaźnia Gallery, we have planned “Workshops on Breaking Watches,” which the gallery will conduct with children as part of the NO TIME project.
How does this connect to my paintings and sculptures? In my work over the last six years, I have focused on creating portraits, masks, and stone heads of hypothetical ancestors and friends, whom I also cast as ancestors. I believe that the lives we live have much more in common than it might seem at first glance. Recently, I calculated that around one million ancestors from around 1500 AD contributed to making me who I am. This staggering number of people also gave life to millions of others. When interacting with my parents, grandparents, and children, I sense that our experiences of life are deeply similar: we are born and die, we experience the same emotions, and we function in an increasingly global culture on a small planet suspended in the vast cosmos. I wonder if looking at portraits of potential ancestors from thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years ago isn’t like looking into a mirror.
Time does not exist. And perhaps, paradoxically, that’s why we don’t seem to have it.
You’re invited!
Robert Sosnowski
Several works were created by Adaobi Sosnowska and Ndidi Sosnowska.
