all keys, all times might resemble a waiting room for some viewers; a paradigmatic site of timeless waiting: a place entered because of symptoms one cannot diagnose; a place where one sits between data and decision. One is inside the system, undeniably, but not aligned with its tempo.
The exhibition is rooted in surfaces that present themselves as clean and in objects that mark micro-interruptions in the smooth surface of neutrality, while appearing too banal to carry meaning. We find ourselves inside of a system whose mechanisms are familiar, even intimate, but di icult to name. all keys, all times stages a somewhat controlled environment, maybe even minimalist in its first impression—while allowing small disturbances to accumulate. A suspended ceiling element, held as a self-supporting structure within the exhibition architecture is marking out the space. The tightly stretched milky latex suggests protection and restriction at once: a surface that smooths, seals, or holds, while sculptural elements across the space disturb the grid.
The exhibition borrows its conceptual charge from systems that promise universality at a cost. Lach references the idea of “all keys” as a condition in which compatibility is achieved through flattening—where everything can be selected or accessed, but only by sacrificing divergence. In this sense, the exhibition is attentive to the politics of standardization: to the way modularity and seamless design can become emotional and historical technologies. The forms in the room are held in a peculiar state: suspended, familiar, and slightly out of tune. The viewer is invited to sense how stasis is produced, how waiting becomes a structure, how the present can be made to feel permanent.
Beneath the latex ceiling lies a large sculptural form that channels the image of a scoreboard—as if it has fallen from a great height. It reads simultaneously as monument and debris. Nearby, a small video, scarcely larger than a postage stamp, shows a figure standing in a cluttered room. The person in it performs a simple, almost childish gesture: rotating the arm as if screwing in a light bulb, a movement sometimes used by children to imitate the sun. Each element in the exhibition carries within it the sediment of how, where, and under what conditions it could come into being. In this sense, neutrality is densely packed with unspoken determinations.
One of the conceptual references for this exhibition is the peculiar logic of equalization embedded in the tuning system known as Werckmeister temperament1, and its cinematic afterlife in thefilmWerckmeister Harmonies by the director Béla Tarr2. In Werckmeister’s musical system, twelve keys per octave make it possible to play in all tonalities, but only at the cost of sacrificing “natural” harmony. Everything becomes playable; everything becomes slightly o . Lach reads this as a metaphor for contemporary existence where maximal compatibility is purchased through the flattening of di erence. In the exhibition, this flattening appears as smoothness, a tonal evenness that drains forms of transcendence without quite rendering them inert.
A key promises a“tune”,a system, a way through; but in a world structured by repeating interfaces, standardized options, and pre- scripted choices, multiplication does not necessarily mean di erence. What looks like infinite access can become another form of enclosure. Lach’s exhibition takes this condition as both its subject and its material: a flattened e ect of time that circulates rather than moves forward. It invites visitors into an environment where the promise of the key is complicated: where access does not guarantee passage, and where “all times” names both permanence and a loop.
Curated by Mirela Baciak.
Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein.
The exhibition by Linda Lach is realized with the generous support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Institute Vienna.
(1) The Werckmeister temperament refers to a system of musical tuning developed by the German organist and music theorist Andreas Werckmeister in the late 17th century. Designed as a compromise between pure (natural) tuning and full tonal flexibility, the system divides the octave into twelve keys that allow modulation across tonalities at the expense of harmonic purity. Historically associated with the standardization of Western musical systems, Werckmeister temperament is often read as an early model of equalization, in which universality is achieved through the flattening of di erence.
(2) Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) is afilmby Hungarian director Béla Tarr, loosely inspired by László Krasznahorkai’s novel The Melancholy of Resistance. Set in a provincial town suspended on the brink of collapse, thefilmuses extreme duration, repetition, and tonal neutrality to evoke a sense of historical stasis and existential suspension. The concept of “Werckmeister harmony” functions less as a musical reference than as a metaphor for a world held in balance through enforced equilibrium, where movement is possible but transformation remains blocked.
Biography
Linda Lach’s (b. 1995 in Warsaw, PL) practice explores topics of recurrent translations and intimacy through performative sculptures, installations, video and poetry utilizing materials such as wood, leather, cotton, plastic and human milk. Her material gestures expand the presence and extend the social function of sculpture and performance by focusing on atemporality, self-exploitation and acts of brutality which exist beyond our categories of safe and threatening. Concerned with the current political peril of eastern Europe, through her practice, Lach navigates the surface of the ongoing symbolic dissolution and engages the inevitable reactionary reterritorialization of our reality.
