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As Time Went On, A Rumour Started at Gianni Manhattan

October 17, 2020

Artists: Mire Lee (With A Pirated Video By Aphex Twin/Baraka)

Exhibition title: As Time Went On, A Rumour Started

Curated by: James Lewis

Venue: Gianni Manhattan, Vienna, Austria

Date: September 7 – October 17, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Gianni Manhattan, Vienna

Newtonian time claims that time is linear, that it is omnipresent and flows from minus infinity to plus infinity. This concept of time is an effective approximation for the majority of interactions that we encounter, such as the passing of a new day, waiting for a train etc.

But time, on a quantum level, is different to our inherent and intuitive understanding of it. Time is not a long line that passes from past to future and there isn’t one single time that we can order and measure.

As time went on, a rumour started juxtaposes three positions against each other, creating a friction intent on challenging inherent and learned misconceptions about the structure of time.

Mire Lee’s suspended kinetic sculpture Made of only hearts at gianni manhattan is made of flailing synthetic material, resembling discarded skin or engineered organs. Lee often salvages and repurposes her own works, letting the components of her pieces be subject to constant change, wear and eventual decline. Until they writhe themselves to breaking point or internal collapse, Lee’s constellation of discarded parts outline a creature in the midst of surviving, creating a very specific point in time, a present that is aware of its past and simultaneously looking into its precarious future.

The last position might not be a work at all, but a tool, a mediator, an impostor. An author-less clip from YouTube juxtaposes a 10-minute looped section of Aphex Twin’s Stone in Focus with a very specific moment of Ron Fricke’s non-narrative documentary film Baraka, showing footage of a Japanese Macaques bathing in a hot spring. The film was innovative for documentary film making by distorting linear storytelling and positions of authorship and hierarchy. Combining this footage with the ambient track of Aphex Twin creates a strange spherical setting for the exhibition which persistently interrogates the notion of a singular time.

These three works persist in discordance with each other. They suggest that everything has the freedom to move rather than stay bound to an eternal timeline. Things regularly come together and then disperse, indicating that the world is not made of a unified time but rather a hybrid of discorded events. As time went on a rumour started proposes that, rather than time, everything is bound to disorder and that change is the underlying force that binds us.

Mire Lee (b. 1988, lives and works in Amsterdam) completed a BFA at the Sculpture Department at the Seoul National University in 2013 and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in 2018. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include: Kunsthal Light Program, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam; Group presentation, Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg (solo) (2021); Carriers, Art Sonje Center, Seoul (solo); More, More, More, TANK Shanghai, Shanghai (2020); Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, 15th Biennale de Lyon, Lyon; Rijksakademie Open Studios 2019, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam; Het is of de stenen spreken (silence is a commons), Casco Art Institute,Utrecht (solo) (2019).

As time went on, a rumour started. Mire Lee, a pirated video of Aphex Twin and Baraka, curated by James Lewis, installation view (2020); photo: kunst-dokumentation.com, courtesy the artists and GIANNI MANHATTAN