Exhibition review: A second of eternity
On a recent visit to Paris, I went to the recently renovated Bourse du Commerce to explore their beautiful “Une seconde d’éternité” exhibition on the top floor.
Including works by 15 artists, Une seconde d’éternité” looks at the passage of time in different ways, fleetingness and timelessness, presence and absence.
Photographic processes are well represented in the exhibition: A photo of the seashore taken in 1857 by Gustave Le Gray is not only an interesting document of early photography, but a fascinating take on time: the long aperture of early cameras cannot capture the fast moving waves hitting the shore, instead fixing the dance of the sea in perpetual motion.
“Tag/Nacht II and III” (both from the vertical landscapes series) by Wolfgang Tillsmans, taken through the windows of a plane in the late 90s, seem to dissolve out of time. Colours merge in surreal gradients, when day becomes night and the earth becomes sky becomes space.
Videos such as Pierre Huyghe’s contribution to the collective work “No ghost, just a shell” complete this photo/cinematographic experience.
Next onto installations: in one room, a perpetually playing piano looks like it is played by an invisible man, while helium balloons float and dance through the room, in Philippe Parreno’s “My room is a fishbowl”. Some balloons, probably recently added, hang close to the ceiling, out of reach and out of bonds while some have dropped close to the floor, where they can be touched and moved. People grab them and send them flying, or simply walk on by, the balloons gliding by behind them.
The space is used well: the large canvases of Rudolf Stingel in the first room seem to respond to absent works by Rothko, their plastery whiteness filling the room with a sense of calm and peace.
Another Stingel piece, “Silver room” is filled by graffiti, tags, stickers, drawings, the writings evolving over time as content is added by the public. This room acts a mirror that society holds to itself- on the day I visited I couldn’t help notice a graffiti in the name of Mahsa Amini, reflecting the situation in Iran in October 2022.
Hardest hitting in the exhibition is “Repeating the Obvious” by Carrie Mae Weems: 39 copies of an unnamed, out of focus black man in blue monochrome photos. We dont know who he is- we don’t even see HIM- but we know his story: he is the unnamed victim of racist violence, the anonymous archetype of a black man in the US of the 21st century, the generic face of BLM.
Completely of his time, but timeless and dehumanised through the historical lens pointed at him. Elsewhere, Miriam Cahn’s “Mare Nostrum”, a large painting of grotesque figures sliding at the bottom of a dark blue painting echoing migrants drowning in the sea, also takes on time through the lens of current affairs.
Also worth seeing at the Bourse du Commerce, Boris Mikhaïlov’s series of photos “At dusk” are on display on the ground floor. Bathed in blue light and taken in Ukraine just after the fall of the USSR in the early 90s, the images oscillate between a document of a time of change and a visceral reminder of the terrible events in Ukraine this year since Russia’s invasion.
“Une seconde d’éternité” runs until the 9th of January 2023 and “At dusk” runs until the 3rd of January 2023.
