Bettina Pousttchi Off the Clock

The Buchmann Gallery is delighted to present the exhibition Off the Clock, featuring new works by the Berlin-based German-Iranian artist Bettina Pousttchi (*1971).  

The works shown here circle around and contemplate different concepts of time and perceptions of time using the medium of photography and sculpture.  

Following the photo installation Framework for the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 2012, the current exhibition for the Berlin Gallery Weekend shows another of Pousttchi’s major photographic works: the first half of the 24-part photo series World Time Clock. Since 2008, Bettina Pousttchi has been photographing public clocks in cities around the world. The group of works will be completed in 2013 when photos from 24 different time zones together will form a “photographic world time clock”.    

The system of time zones was created in 1884 at the Washington Meridian Conference in response to increasing mobility; Greenwich in London was defined as the centre of this system and its point of reference. Bettina Pousttchi’s clocks all show the same time, and the artist thus uses photography to suggest an imaginary synchronism. She not only emphasises the global network that spans our world, fuelled by increasing mobility and digital communication, she also highlights the special role of photography in relation to the perception of time and the associated medial construction of history and memory.  

The artist’s interest in time is continued in a group of sculptures, Squeezers, which is being shown in an exhibition for the first time. 

The Squeezers are made of mechanically deformed bollards. The original function of the bollard, namely to mark a border in the public space, has been nullified. The surfaces appear soft and flowing, and the individual bollards are entwined in dynamic motion. All sculptures are made of one and same object in different manifestations which, due partly to the varying colours, seem like phases of time or shadows of each other. These works are reminiscent of groups of figures, possibly also because the names of the sculptures have been taken from Berlin street names.  

Bettina Pousttchi has had solo shows in the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2012), Kunsthalle Basel (2011), and in the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, where in 2009-2010 her much-acclaimed photo installation Echo was displayed on the façade. She also exhibited at the Biennale in Venice in 2009 and 2003. Her works have been shown in TENT Rotterdam, Lewis Glucksman Gallery in Cork, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem, Kunsthalle Detroit and Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Between 2 May and 27 July 2013, Hauser & Wirth London will be presenting a new architecture-inspired photo installation by Bettina Pousttchi on the façade of their historic gallery at Piccadilly as part of the exhibition Trade Routes. 

Please contact the gallery srequire images of the works.