Time Kawara

KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 brill.
nl/kron
Time in the Art of Roman Opalka,

Tatsuo Miyajima, and Rene Rietmeyer
Karlyn De Jongh
Global Art Affairs Foundation, Leiden, The Netherlands, +31 6 3943 7090
info@globalartaffairs.org
Abstract
In the history of art, time is not frequently taken up as the artistic topic in itself. While time has
been sporadically present in the work of certain single artists such as Claude Monet or within
movements like Futurism, where speed and change were highlighted, only over the past several
decades, has time become a more explicit topic in art. In this article, time is addressed by
discussing the work and thoughts of three contemporary artists who have taken this concept as
a guiding motif in their work: Roman Opalka, Tatsuo Miyajima, and Rene Rietmeyer. Their
work makes clear that time in art is strongly related to actual and individual life-time and is
concerned with creating an attentiveness to human existence in relation to time as a continuing
entity.
Keywords
time, visualizing time, art, life-time, death, infinity
Introduction
As a curator for the project Personal Structures: Time Space Existence and
together with my colleague Sarah Gold, I organize exhibitions and symposia
and publish texts dealing with the concepts of time, space, and existence. The
project was initiated in 2002 by the Dutch artist Rene Rietmeyer, who defined
these concepts as essential themes for his own artworks. His plan in inaugurat-
ing this project was to influence developments in contemporary art by creat-
ing Personal Structures as a platform for artists to communicate and to develop
their work through exhibitions, symposia, and publications. The June 2007
symposium in Amsterdam featured the concept of ‘time’ and represented the
first in an ongoing series of events. In organizing these events, we intended our
goal to be to present artists from various generations and different parts of the
globe. Each of these artists engages with the concept of time in his or her own
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/156852410X561880
K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 89
way, thereby actively demonstrating a wide diversity of temporal engagements.

The presentation and staging of these perspectives challenge viewers to inter-
rogate and define their own positions towards time.
While the combined concepts of time, space, and existence have been a
nexus for discussions in philosophy, physics and other fields of study for many
years, art seems to have been left ‘behind.’ Certainly there have been artists’
movements for which time and space were an issue, such as in Futurism or
Cubism, but for them time as such was not a primary focus. As well, there
have been single artists who took up the challenge of depicting time. The
impressionist artist Claude Monet, for example, painted a series of works
depicting the exterior of the Cathedral in Rouen, France. Each of these paint-
ings shows the façade at a different hour of the day and at different times of
the year. However, here too time is one element among others and not the
central topic of the work. An additional complexity exerts itself in that art
works of the past may carry temporal dynamics that were unintended either
by the artist himself or the culture of the time. In other words, evolving his-
tory becomes a means of interpreting time. Working with the Personal Struc-
tures project, I meet artists who claim they do not have ‘thoughts’ about the
process of their work; they ‘simply’ make the work. Any ‘thoughts’ are either
previous assumptions or by-products that may be experienced by art lovers or
art historians alike. Roman Opalka, by contrast, is an artist whose art over the
past 45 years has confronted the problem of time as both subject matter and
methodology.
The difficulty in formulating a position towards temporal concepts and in
presenting such philosophical concepts in an artwork also becomes evident
when considering the age at which artists interested in time have developed
their practice and thoughts. Through the Personal Structures project I learned
that many artists go through a searching period before being able to concep-
tualize these ideas in their actual work. In other words, thoughts about time
take time to develop. One needs life-experience before confronting the task of
representing personal attitudes towards time in a two- or three-dimensional
object.
In this article my goal is to explore the subject of time in specific artists
today. The subject is sufficiently complex and personal that no artist approaches
time in the same manner. Before investigating Opalka, Miyajima, and Riet-
meyer in more depth, I will briefly note two other artists who have worked
specifically with time. An artist seriously occupied with time is the Japanese
artist On Kawara, whose art and life merge into inseparability. On Kawara’s
series of works manifests his daily existence. His Today Series—also called Date
90 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117
Paintings—is likely the most well known: a monochrome ground on which

month, day and year are painted in letters and figures. On Kawara started this
series in 1966, and he continues to paint these works to the present time.
Theorizing about On Kawara’s concept of time is problematic; the artist him-
self has never published any personal written statements. His only statements
are his artworks. Although it remains speculative to say something about On
Kawara’s understanding of time, some reflections are offered by his work as
well as by the comments of other artists. For instance, Opalka who met On
Kawara once remarks on his fellow artist’s ideas:
[On Kawara] says: “if I am not finished between Berlin and New York, then I must
destroy this Space-time, this period, this Date Painting.” To me that is not logical,
because time is in everything and because that is the case, it should not be necessary
for him to destroy his painting. This determination or fixation that he has, seems to be
completely Japanese. It has nothing particular to do with time.1
While the issue about destroying a particular work if the painting is not fin-
ished before midnight is clearly a calendrical point, it also happens that On
Kawara sometimes paints two Date Paintings in one twenty-four hour period.
For example, NOV. 3, 1989 exists twice. In addition, the way of painting a
particular date, the language and calendrical conventions depend on the loca-
tion where On Kawara finds himself when he is painting: NOV. 3. 1989 seems
painted in the USA, whereas 26 OTT. 1990 is more likely to have been painted
during a stay in Italy. It seems On Kawara focuses on the day in relation to
himself as a person, rather than an overall time that counts for everyone, and
seems in that sense more concerned with the concept of existence within time
and space, than with time as such.
Another artist dealing with time is the Taiwanese performance artist Tehch-
ing Hsieh. After growing up in Taiwan, Hsieh came to the United States in
1974, where he stayed as an illegal immigrant for fourteen years, until he was
granted amnesty in 1988. During this period, Hsieh made five One Year
Performances in and around his studio in New York City, and started his
Thirteen Year Plan. His performances were based on severe and self-imposed
restrictions, such as not seeking shelter and choosing instead to live outdoors
in New York for an entire year, or imprisoning himself in a cage for a year,
while neither reading nor talking. Using long durations such as these, Hsieh’s
1
Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold, Roman Opalka: Time Passing (Leiden, Netherlands:
Global Art Affairs Foundation, 2011), 18.
performances centralize time as the main theme of his work, making art and
life simultaneous, showing they are integrated activities. As demonstrated by
the restrictions of his chosen performances, Hsieh understands his biography
as a life sentence. Since the millennium and released from the restrictions of
the Thirteen Year Plan—a thirteen year period in which he allowed himself to
make art, but not to exhibit it publicly—Hsieh is, as he told me, no longer
“doing art.” His performances were so extreme and demanding that he has
stopped actively making art performances. Now he is “doing life.”2
The work of the previously mentioned artists makes clear that certain con-
temporary art impinges on time directly in its impact on individual life times.
This personal endeavor seeks to create a direct physical awareness of time. This
is not, however, a solipsistic exercise; through this temporal awareness, the
artist reaches out his vision to the viewer. The artwork thus functions as the
medium of primary experience (the artist’s) for another fundamental experi-
ence (the viewer’s). As well, such art translates theorizing about time into real-
istic praxis. Thoughts and life are integrated, art and life no longer occupying
a divide. To this end, an artist successfully working with time lives his thoughts
and lives his art. As the Austrian artist Arnulf Rainer once said, “For 24 hours
a day, my principal occupation consists of working as an artist, discussing with
myself, and thinking about money that is to be spent. Earlier on I also did
what others consider to be living.”3 And he adds in an interview for Personal
Structures, almost 40 years later: “Life, as it appears, is a pale reflection of art,
of artistic creation.”4 Rainer’s words show an awareness that for him a limited
24-hour day mercilessly demands priorities in the service of art.
This demonstration of a direct awareness of time is active in the works of
three contemporary artists: Opalka, Miyajima, and Rietmeyer. All three have
dedicated themselves to time for a number of years. My selection of these
particular three artists is based on the fact that they come from different parts
of the world and represent different generations. On the other hand, their
2
Not only more established artists, but also younger artists represent the concept of time in
art: some examples are the Belgian artist Kris Martin who addresses time using found objects,
and the Japanese performance artist Sasaki who draws life-time on the beat of the heart. Each of
these artist’s work is deeply individualistic and personal. I have chosen not to focus on these
artists in this essay, but rather on three others who have spoken extensively about the ‘matter’ of
time and whose work has been consistently obsessed with time over a period of many years.
3
Arnulf Rainer in a text from 1971, as quoted by Peter Lodermeyer in Peter Lodermeyer,
Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold, Personal Structures: Time—Space—Existence. (Cologne,
Germany: DuMont, 2009), 402.
4
Ibid.
similarities show a general tendency in thinking about time in art. In this

article, I describe their work, their thoughts about time, and how they realize
these thoughts in their art and in their lives. The thoughts presented here are
based on personal contact or on their statements in the symposia I organized.
1. Roman Opalka: A Monument to Nonsense

Roman Opalka (* 1931, France) is a Polish artist who has spent the past
45 years painting the progression of numbers from 1 to infinity, a radical pro-
gram through which he seeks to portray the passage of time. All Opalka’s
paintings are dated with the beginning, 1965.5 In this year the artist started
painting numbers 1, 2, 3 . . . on a canvas, using white paint (Figure 1). During
the Amsterdam symposium Personal Structures: Time in 2007, Opalka said the
following:
All the machines we know of, the clocks, “tell” the time, but I “show” time, and that
is something entirely different. This is the painterly solution to the question concern-
ing what a visualization of time might be. In this sense numbers accomplish best what
we up to this day may show of time in the sense of progression, in the sense of dyna-
mics, in the sense of the unity and the expansion of time.6
Opalka starts each picture at the top left corner and paints from left to right,
ending at the bottom right, using a “no. zero” brush to ascertain the graphical
dimension and the legibility of the numbers drawn. The numbers are approx-
imately 5mm high, a size that is easily visible for the artist when he is painting
the work and allows him to paint the two circles of the figure eight, keeping
the center open. To date, this has resulted in approximately 230 paintings,
which he calls Details—each is a detail of the continuous series that started
with 1 and goes on into infinity.7 Opalka’s paintings are not, however, solely a
progression of numbers on a canvas. At least three significant additional aspects
of Opalka’s work contribute to his interpretation of time.
First of all, we encounter the background color of the canvas. While the
numbers from 1 to infinity are painted in white, the background color changes
5
All of Opalka’s paintings are dated with the year 1965 followed by “/ 1-∞.” Different works
are indicated by the first and last number of the particular painting. Each painting is an element
of this one, continuous work and represents an element of the progression of numbers from 1 to
infinity.
6
Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 42.
7
This is the number of paintings Opalka mentioned in the summer of 2008.
gradually over time. This change was part of the original concept: Opalka
started with a black background, adding 1% white color for each canvas back-
ground in the years to come. The addition of 1% white was based on an esti-
mate of a specific but merely statistical duration: at the time Opalka began this
work, men born in his region of Poland were estimated to reach 75 years of
age.8 Through a quick mathematical equation, Opalka concluded that by add-
ing 1% white to each successive painting meant that he would be painting
white numbers on a white background by the time of his 75th birthday. Now
it is 2010. Opalka has been painting white on white for four years now, and
he will be painting white on white until the day he dies (Figure 2). The white-
ness he describes as well-earned; he deserves it after having spent all these years
painting. White is certainly an issue for Opalka: he likes the idea that his hair
has become white over the years and that his eyes have become lighter. Con-
versing with him in German also allows for a pun: weissheit (whiteness) or
weisheit (wisdom). Despite his playful comments, whether he really enjoys it
is unclear. Opalka’s position towards this seems mixed: on the one hand, hav-
ing this awareness about our short life-time makes him enjoy his life every day;
on the other hand, living out his program is a sacrifice for the artist, continu-
ing to paint numbers until he can no longer stand straight in front of his
canvas.
Secondly, while painting his numbers, Opalka simultaneously records the
numbers on a tape recorder in a monotonous voice. He speaks the numbers in
the Polish language, his mother tongue. Similar to English, the enunciation of
numbers in Polish is “logical”: the numbers come in order of appearance; the
number ‘85’ is thus eighty-five and not, as in German fünf-und-achtzig or in
French quatre-vingt-cinq. This way of articulating numbers stresses linearity
and sequence over mere information. When his paintings are exhibited, the
sound of his voice fills the room and creates a contemplative atmosphere. The
audio used for these exhibitions is a mix of various recordings of spoken num-
bers; one hears numbers in a random order intended to reflect one’s usual
haphazard thoughts. The artist chose this combination of an audio and visual
display of time because it manifests two different times simultaneously: the
linear time of the painting and the non-linear time echoing in one’s head as
one views the painting.
Opalka shows not only ‘time passing’, but also his lifetime passing. Even
though his life-time is also integrated in his Details, most clearly Opalka’s life
is recorded in his Auto-portraits (Figures 3 and 4): after each day of working in
8
Opalka was born in France to Polish parents and returned to Poland in 1935.
Figure 1. Roman Opalka, Opalka 1965/ 1-∞, Detail 893147-918553 (detail),

undated, acryl on linen, 196 × 135 cm. Courtesy: Sammlung Lenz Schönberg,
Söll, Austria.
Figure 2. Roman Opalka in front of his painting at the Exhibition Personal

Structures: Time at Arti et Amicitiae, 15 June 2007, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Work: Opalka 1965/1-∞: Detail 2910060-2932295, undated, acryl on linen,
196 × 135cm. Courtesy: Caldic Collectie, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Figure 3. Roman Opalka, Opalka 1965/1-∞, Portrait, Undat. Photograph,

33 × 24 cm. Courtesy: Sammlung Lenz Schönberg, Söll, Austria.
Figure 4. Roman Opalka, Opalka 1965/1-∞, Portrait, Undat. Photograph,

33 × 24 cm. Courtesy: Sammlung Lenz Schönberg, Söll, Austria.
his studio, the artist takes his own picture, using a camera installation that
stands in front of the canvas as he paints. The photos show the artist’s face,
frontal, wearing the same type of white shirt and the same haircut. On the
background is his painting, displaying the numbers he has just added. Because
the visual aspects of the photographs remain rigorously the same, the facial
effects of time are dramatized. When hanging the photographs, Opalka takes
his own height as a reference, registering the change of his height over time—
from 177 to 170 cm. Even though these photographs are called Auto-portraits,
they are not merely self-portraits. In his own words, “I do not tell about my
life; I make life manifest.”9
The inspiration for Opalka’s concept occurred in 1964, when the artist was
33 years old. He had been waiting for his wife in the Café Bristol in Warsaw,
Poland. She was two hours late, and he had time to think about his future.
Although the artist was already quite well-known, he was struggling with his
work. He wondered how he might succeed in painting time. Previously, from
1959 to 1963, he had been painting his ‘hourglass paintings’ called Chronomes:
white dots on a black background. He recognized his dilemma with these
paintings. It was impossible to locate these works’ beginning and end, which
could be neither measured nor determined. These Chronomes, he felt, lacked
direction, but Opalka believed that time, by contrast, possesses an unequivo-
cal direction. Opalka’s reflections were influenced by the question of ‘What is
left to do?’ a popular point of discussion at the time concerning the end of art.
At that point in the 1960s, painting seemed to have exhausted itself. Opalka,
however, realized that no artist had dedicated his work entirely to time, paint-
ing one, continuous work: Opalka 1965/ 1-∞. Through this he found a per-
sonal way out of the impasse that threatened modern painting. Indeed, he
claims that he saw himself as the last avant-garde artist.10 As he was waiting for
his wife, the idea came to him that each dot could be a number. With this new
concept, using numbers to show time, his formalist problems were also solved:
his number 1 would provide a beginning, a direction; and since numerals are
infinite, there would implicitly be no end.
9
10
The controversy about the end of art seems mainly a discussion about the end of painting.
The sixties was the start of several new movements as a reaction to this. The Concept Art
movement, of which Joseph Kosuth was one of the founders, or the Radical Painters, of which
Joseph Marioni and Marcia Hafif are examples. I see Opalka outside these movements; he has
found his own ‘place’ in art history by living out his individual program.
From 1 to infinity
After the moment in the Café Bristol, Opalka took seven months to paint his
first number: 1. This simple first movement—one small line—carried terrify-
ing consequences: painting numbers from 1 to infinity for the rest of his life,
doing nothing other artistically than painting ‘time passing.’ The awareness
that this would be his life was overwhelming: “I already knew what this con-
cept was the beginning of. I knew it would continue throughout my entire
life.”11 After a few weeks, the artist developed a heart problem due to the
excruciating strain. He explains that this tension was “not only because it [the
concept] was so good, but because of the sacrifice it meant I would have to
make a life long for this work.”12 He spent one month in hospital, and even
today recalling this experience affects Opalka.
Opalka claims that he better understands time as well as life at this point,
although he quickly denies any deeper understanding: “How can you under-
stand a thing as stupid as our existence? Maybe that sounds too brutal, but this
existence makes no sense; it is nonsense. And this nonsense is my work.”13 For
Opalka, despite our attempts, we cannot understand time. But in the end
Opalka decided to accept living out his program of absolute futility. Even the
excruciating awareness of painting numbers for the rest of his life, without
purpose, did not deter him. For him, the urgency and origin of his program
lie in its nonsense: not only the nonsense of art, but the nonsense of existence
and time. His work is, as he says, “a monument to nonsense.” As he told Sarah
Gold and me when we visited him in France for our Art Project Roman Opalka:
Time Passing,
Our life has no meaning. My work is the nonsense that manifests this. It is comparable
with the German drinking a glass of liquor, or the Frenchman having a glass of wine:
life has no meaning. The German and the Frenchman are right. They are also philoso-
phers, but then they have to show it. That is almost hypocritical, but I think they
should show it. The consequences are very different when you very seriously have these
thoughts that our existence has no sense.14
The wish to make this ‘nonsense’ manifest may arise from the Polish mentality
of that time. As the artist explains, Poland was a socialist country:
11
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid., 43.
14
De Jongh and Gold, Roman Opalka, 58.
It was a Marxist world back then. To work was the goal. Work was like a certain reli-
gion; it was something positive for the economy and for the people. This example, that
is my work, is such a big nonsense . . . I can tell to no worker that what he does makes
no sense at all. He needs to earn money. The nonsense of my work has never been so
strong with regard to production; it is a productive mentality: I had to create some-
thing. But I made something that has no sense: I could not eat or sell it.15
Poland’s socialist climate was instrumental in developing Opalka’s concept.

There were galleries in Poland that remained independent of the capitalist
credo that “time is money”; for artists like Opalka such galleries represented
freedom from commerce. The artist saw this as his opportunity. Away from a
commercial atmosphere, Opalka claims to have enjoyed a freedom denied art-
ists living in other parts of the world; he cites as an example On Kawara, who
started his Today series around the same time as Opalka started his program.
Time, for Opalka, moves continuously in a linear way without repetition.
As Opalka told me in a meeting in Venice in April 2010, he cannot even repeat
the numbers on his tape recorder. For instance, remaking a lost tape in which
he spoke the number 1,000,000 proved impossible because his voice had
changed over time. Opalka compares it to a river: “With my work it is some-
thing like a river, but the river has only one direction.”16 This continuous
movement goes on into infinity. Despite the infinitude of time, Opalka
acknowledges a beginning point. This concept of origin is perhaps a religious
residue of Opalka’s, although we must not consider this in a purely spiritual
manner. He does, for instance, speak of the Big Bang and even speculates
that there may have been other Big Bangs; where the beginning lies, is unclear.
The artist portrays himself as an agnostic. With respect to his paintings,
he has described his number “1” as a Big Bang. But “1” is not only the begin-
ning; according to Opalka, the “1” is everything, a unit. The artist also
argues that he could have stopped painting after marking the “1” because in
potential it contains all other natural numbers that are about to follow in the
sequence. Opalka adds that the actual birth of the work is merely administra-
tive information; the real source lies in the concept, whose date is difficult
to determine.
Time may be going infinitely in one direction, but the experience of time
can extend in all directions. This is what he manifests with his spoken num-
bers. To clarify this, Opalka takes the example from his favorite philosopher
Martin Heidegger in his book Feldweg [Pathway] from 1949, and compares
15
16
this aspect of time with going for a walk. Influenced by this book, the artist
explains that “if you go for a walk, you go in one direction, but your head goes
in all directions.”17 What happens in the interim, the relativity of how long the
duration of an hour or two hours may be, cannot be measured. The mind goes
in all directions: “What has happened in his head during his walk, that is time.
The steps are already there, but in between the steps that we take, is our life,
our thoughts.”18 This way of thinking about time is part of Opalka’s program.
With this metaphor of the stroll, Opalka points to a time that is not pro-
grammed, but has a rhythm of its own. This temporal randomness is demon-
strated by the spoken Polish numbers and is illustrated in his paintings: “The
works are not all the same; they are different. This is also the rhythm of my
existence: sometimes I do not sleep; at other times, I do sleep; sometimes I
sleep more, or less. This is the best: not to program yourself . . . In my work I
have created a program, but this program has a lot to do with this imprecise
time span.”19
Being toward death

Although time for Opalka is linear, it is simultaneously separate from life itself.
His work shows the progression of numbers from 1 to infinity. On the one
hand, his paintings portray time as an independently moving entity; on the
other hand, the work addresses the time in which we find ourselves. The paint-
ings are intertwined with the artist’s life: “I have chosen my life as the time
period, as the emotion facing what would be time. This is the work of some-
one freer than any man in history has ever been before. He reflects upon his
existence and thus, it is also an echo of philosophy, for example, Heidegger,
the ‘existence’ is in my work.”20 As Opalka sees a direction of time, he sees a
direction of life as well. In this quote, he refers to Heidegger’s Being-toward-
death [Sein zum Tode], and he seems to understand himself as well as his
work as a Being-toward-death: “Heidegger’s Feldweg, his walk on the path
through the field, that is like my work. I walk further into the landscape, the
horizon goes on, with me . . . This is almost like what I do in my work. Being-
toward-death means that life is determined by the awareness of death.”21
Opalka insists that without knowledge of death, we cannot live a committed
17
18
19
Ibid., 57.
20
21
Ibid., 238.
life. This attentiveness to death avoids morbid despair by illuminating an obli-

gation to enjoy the one life we have.
Even though Opalka describes himself as an agnostic, he admits that he
‘almost’ sees an element of Christianity in his work. The artist equates living
out his program with a sacrifice to humankind and to art that involves con-
sciously enacting the passage of time. He has been painting his numbers for
45 years, almost every day. Now he is not physically strong enough to paint
more than one hour a day. Irrevocably restricted, he sees his work as a sacrifice
comparable to Christ’s own Eucharistic sacrifice: “this is my body.” Opalka’s
body makes itself present in every work, each painting a mirror of himself.
Since Opalka’s paintings are his life, his work will be finished when he himself
is dead: “In the work the concern [. . .] is for the completion of existence. This
is a very special situation inherent to its construction. The work is always suf-
ficiently there.”22 This means that Opalka does not have to complete a canvas
in order for a work to be ‘finished.’ Being 79 years old, he now paints approx-
imately 1 hour a day, but the work is as it is. One could even say that when
Opalka painted the first number, the “1”, the l’unité, in potential everything
was there already. About this beginning, the artist remarks:
Of course, this was only in the sense of a concept. In order for it to be a work I had to
make this sacrifice, otherwise it would only have had a logical basis, but would not be
a work. My work simply contains all aspects of existence. My work is always virtually
complete. It is no problem not to finish a picture. I have always completed the work.
Like my life, it is always complete.23
As humans, we live only a short moment in time. But Opalka also speaks
about infinity with regard to his life: “I cannot know when I will die. I know
that I will die, but the moment when it happens is so infinite because no one
will know that he has died. [. . .] In this sense we are eternal.”24 The knowledge
of the moment of death is important here. We know that we will die, but we
can never know that we have died: the artist constructs a nexus between his
Being-toward-death and his idea that life, like time, is infinite. Death seems to
be a difficult subject for Opalka: on the one hand he sees it as a liberation of
living out his program; on the other hand, he fears it like anyone else.
22
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid., 40.
2. Tatsuo Miyajima: LEDS Equal Life

In other parts of the world and in the next generation of artists there are
equally serious and sincere attempts to address time in art. If in Opalka’s oeu-
vre we are confronted with the actual performance of a working out of life-
passing in time towards death, for the Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima (* 1957,
Japan) time in art is effectively conveyed through carefully programmed
LEDS. His goal is to raise an awareness of what he calls ‘The Life,’ an umbrella
concept for the interdependence of time and existence, one he has only recently
been able to articulate:
Why I did not explain ‘The Life’ directly is because at the beginning of my perfor-
mance period, I just did not have a clear mind for it, and until 1995 I was just too
immature to use words and also too inexperienced to explain it. Like many others
before me have also done, it means that it is easier to explain ‘Time’ as a concept than
‘The Life.’25
Miyajima’s ‘The Life’ is an English translation of the Japanese ‘Inochi,’ which

refers not only to each person’s life, but also to that of animals, stones and
plants. Miyajima explains that in the Eastern world, ‘The Life’ is taken as a
totality; it refers to everything possessing life.
Miyajima has focused on time since the 1980s. Just like Opalka, Miyajima
uses numbers to express movement and change because, according to him,
numbers are universally understandable. However, unlike Opalka’s hand-
painted numbers on traditional canvas, Miyajima represents ‘The Life’ by the
numbers of LEDs in installation pieces that are both larger-than-life and deli-
cate, fragile, almost to the point of seeming vulnerable (See Protrusensitive—
xo. 3, Figure 5). Counting, he claims, gives one the feeling of “‘the passage of
time,’ a ‘rhythm by counting speed.’”26 Each LED in Miyajima’s installations
has its own predetermined speed; together the LEDs comprising an installa-
tion—sometimes as many as 1000 different lights—show various speeds.
There is a calculated poignancy here. Each countdown or enumeration of
numbers represents the life of an individual. The variations simulate the differ-
ences between individual lives: some people’s lives last 100 years; others “die”
young.
Miyajima’s diverse work started with performances, solidified as he began to
make sculptural installations, and then changed again with his public projects
25
26
Ibid., 315.
and his two- and three-dimensional wall installations. Despite the variations,
Miyajima’s work is immediately recognizable. Most are made with LEDs of
numbers that count ‘up’ from 1 to 9 or ‘down’ from 9 to 1; zero is not shown.27
At the point when zero is expected to appear, there is a moment of darkness.
In this way, as Miyajima explains, this numerical absence enlists the participa-
tion of the viewer. The non-appearance of zero is ‘louder’ than the bright lights
of the other numbers:
One other thing [. . .] is to emphasize the deleting of the zero. For example, 9, 8, 7 . . .
the numbers go down in order. Zero will arrive naturally by prediction. At the moment
the zero should come, it gets dark (no number). So, you can come up with the thought
why there are no zeros. There, you can think about zero. So, the numbers go down in
order and go up in order, that is very important and, in fact, that is my expression to
let the audience consciously experience ‘Ku.’28
For instance, in his 2003 work Counter Void (Figure 6) installed in Tokyo’s
Roppongi area, Miyajima goes against the superficiality of the nightlife in
Roppongi and creates an awareness of our own existence. The work is 16 feet
high and 164 feet long. The viewer is dwarfed, overpowered both by the size
of the numbers as well as the light surrounding the numbers. The confronta-
tion with the counting numbers is frightening and perhaps exhilarating in its
relentless presence. Viewers must crane to view the work; close up, one cannot
take in its entirety. Miyajima explains the absence of zero, ‘Ku’ as death: “Rop-
pongi is [a] town of night and [is] filled with desire even more than [in the]
daytime. I dare to bring ‘Death’ to such [a] night in Roppongi, bring ‘Dark-
ness’ to the center of mass media. The artwork will create the black hole of
‘Death’ and ‘Darkness’, and offer [an] opportunity to think of ‘Deeper Life.’ ”29
In his numerical conception of time, the visible numbers 1 to 9 represent
life, while zero functions as its counterpart. For Miyajima, zero is the moment
of death; since death is not visible, a moment of darkness represents it. But
nothingness is only one of zero’s meanings in Miyajima’s work. In stark con-
trast, zero’s other meaning is ‘vast quantity,’ by which the artist indicates future
possibility and potential. The moment of darkness is thus equally the possibil-
ity of a new beginning, a new life. Additionally, the vastness of zero denotes an
27
In an interview with me, Miyajima admitted to have shown zero once, in the work Empty
Sets.
28
29
As stated by Tatsuo Miyajima in 2003, on his website: http://www.tatsuomiyajima.com/
en/text/void.html
Figure 5. Tatsuo Miyajima, C.F. Protrusensitive—no. 3, 2007, 66.5 × 1.3 × 58.2 cm.
12 LEDs. Courtesy: Tatsuo Miyajima and Lisson Gallery, London, UK.
Figure 6. Tatsuo Miyajima, Counter Void, 2003, neon, glass, IC, aluminum,
electric wire 5 × 50 m (installation) / 1 unit : 3.2 × 2.2 m × 6 figures. Collec-
tion of TV Asahi, Tokyo, Japan. Courtesy: Scai The Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan.
unimaginable infinitude, possible but inconceivable. Reflecting that zero

means both the nothing and the plus, Miyajima returns to its original mean-
ing. In a talk at TATE Modern in London on 24 April 2010, he explained
death as a state of sleep, a preparation for the next birth. ‘The Life’ includes
both life and death. In his work this is portrayed as the visible and the non-
visible. Miyajima rejects an exclusive conceptualization of his idea that ‘time is
life;’ he insists it be taken realistically. As he indicated in an interview with me,
“My work [. . .] does not indicate ‘Time’, ‘Space’ and ‘The Life’; my works try
to live with ‘Time’, ‘Space’ and ‘The Life.’ ”30 Rather than theorize about time,
Miyajima offers viewers the occasion to interrogate their own lives. He does,
however, have his personal interpretation of time. In 1987 the artist articu-
lated three central concepts: 1. keep changing; 2. continue forever; 3. connect
with everything. Even though the first two concepts seem redundant to a
Western person, Miyajima makes explicit that in Eastern thought ‘keep chang-
ing’ and ‘continue forever’ are not the same. Together, the three concepts com-
prise ‘The Life’.
Three concepts
Each LED in Miyajima’s works is set to constant change. He explains: “Every-
thing keeps changing, life keeps changing . . . Even ‘keep changing’ is constantly
changing.”31 The LEDs count in order 1, 2, 3 . . . or 9, 8, 7 . . . The next number
in the sequence is predictable. When counting backward 9, 8, 7 . . . the num-
bers descend in a predictable order but at zero, the light goes out and there is
no number. After this dark moment of zero, the counting starts all over again.
The numbers continue, presumably forever. The two movements of change
and of continuity are mutually-related elements in Miyajima’s ‘The Life.’ He
says: “What continues forever changes ‘The Life,’ where the prime elements
are birth and death. Both those changes and the process of changing continue
forever. ‘The Life’ is forever, changing all the time.”32 The concept of ‘forever,’
however, has nothing to do with permanency, which the artist sees as a West-
ern notion. While permanency certainly may operate in ‘to continue forever,’
it may also imply some degree of stasis or stagnancy. The Eastern Weltbild by
contrast recognizes that a ‘shape keeps changing by movement and that con-
tinues forever.’ The movement, not the condition, is eternal. Miyajima adds,
30
31
Ibid., 313.
32
Ibid.
“‘Permanent,’ we use it, but one day we humans, or life, will die out. ‘Chang-
ing by movement’ does not die out.”33
Miyajima’s third concept—‘connect with everything’—is often visualized
in his combination of LEDs with technical and natural materials. In one
such artwork, his Pile Up Life project, the LEDs are connected with mud
(Figure 7), combining nature and technology.34 In Miyajima’s installations one
rarely encounters just a single counting LED. But even a single LED reflects
the unity of numbers: for instance, the number 8 is digitally constructed of
seven parts. By the inventive programming of the ‘on’ and ‘off ’ of these seven
parts, all numbers can be created: 8 without its left two lines creates 3; without
the top right corner, it is 6. Miyajima explains: “In fact, the number 8 contains
all numbers. It shows one is many and many is one. One human is the same
person, but the human character changes many times (many). But it is just
one human life (one). ‘The Life’ is one form (one). That one life changes many
times (many). The number 8 contains all these images.”35 In this way, each
LED number is a unity or whole that contains everything: life and the passage
of life-time through the numbers whose endlessly changing constancy con-
tinuously leads towards death, represented by the absence of the predictable
and necessary number zero.
The awareness of time: Art in You

While change, continuity, and connection are generally accepted dynamics of
life, Miyajima describes another concept that specifically addresses each viewer:
‘Art in You.’ Here the artist raises awareness about ‘The Life’ by compelling the
viewer to confront herself or himself. Miyajima elaborates:
My concept ‘Art in You’ is that the work uses a mirror which projects the inside of the
body of the audience and they, the audience, discover the art inside of themselves.
They notice ‘the Art’ which they had already in them. My artwork is the device for the
audience to take notice of ‘their Art.’ Otherwise, without having any background
knowledge of it, we will not be moved by seeing artwork coming from a completely
different culture, language or religion.36
33
34
Exhibition “Tatsuo Miyajima,” Pile Up Life at the Lisson Gallery in London, UK, 25
November 2009-16 January 2010.
35
36
Ibid., 313.
Figure 7. Tatsuo Miyajima, Pile up Life No. 6, 2008, 84 × 64 × 64 cm.

LED, IC, stone (pumice), electric wire. Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery,
London, England.
Figure 8. Tatsuo Miyajima, Hoto, 2008, 549 × 208 cm, LED, electric wire,
stainless steel, iron frame, installation view at Contemporary Art Gallery, Art
Tower Mito. Courtesy: Scai The Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan.
Miyajima presents this mirror by reacting to world events: the project Pile Up
Life, for example, addresses natural disasters and invites the viewer to partici-
pate by selecting a specific speed for the ‘counting’ LEDs. This viewer partici-
pation initiates what Miyajima calls “personal time,” which is the individual
experience of time during an event that feels longer or shorter depending on
the situation. For Miyajima this is the crucial understanding of time: “‘Time’
is definitely a personal thing. The Time concept [which] began in Greenwich
in 1884 [was] the conceptual interpretation of a new modernism. It is based
on the universe and an impersonal general theory. Essentially, ‘Time’ is the
same as an individual’s death. It should be very personal. Individual death
exists in an infinite variety of distinctions. One is not the same as others.”37 In
other words, despite the ubiquity of constant change, permanent continuity,
and unifying connectivity, at the core a personal, individual, and unique expe-
rience of time exerts itself within the human agent. The viewer is drawn into
the work. If it is not through the mesmerizing power of the counting LEDs, it
is through the use of mirror surfaces, such as in the work Hoto (Figure 8), or
the use of sensors following the viewer as he or she moves around in the exhi-
bition space in Mega Death (Figure 9). The ‘Art in You’ concept points to the
idea of personal time: it is about one’s own life-time, as well as that of others,
and it requires the acknowledgement of whether a particular death is “natural”
or “artificial.” The work Mega Death does exactly this. Miyajima explains:
According to the calculation of Brejinsky, Presidential aide to former US President

Carter, war, revolution and dispute in the 20th century have lost human lives of
167,000,000 people. This figure, a terrifying number, equals to a total population of
Italy, France and England of 1997. In a way this century has been an era caused by
“Artificial Mega Death.” [The] “Death” of The Life which has been artificially and
unjustly taken away has no individuality any longer. This “life and death” all becomes
“death” in the same nature. The reason for this is because the destruction and division
of individual “Natural Life Time” implies the disorder of [the] eternal rhythm from
“life” to “death”, and to the “next life” which . . . life originally possess[ed]. [Artificial
death] becomes a depraved “death,” which [cuts off the] eternal rhythm . . . [Artificial
death is] not . . . a fertile “death” with a rhythm to its “next life.” This “death” has no
longer the glitter to make harmony with “life,” with its individuality divested. The dark-
ness of “Artificial Mega Death” is filled up with the same nature of “death” and only
the terror of suspension remains. This work is my attempt to show the beauty of “Natu-
ral Life Time” as a majestic and universal symphony, [and] the contrast of terror . . .38
37
38
Miyajima’s statement of May 1999 on his website, http://tatsuomiyajima.com/en/text/
megadeath.html
108
K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117
Figure 9. Tatsuo Miyajima, Mega Death, 1999, LED, IC, electric wire, sensor, etc., 4.5 × 15.3 × 15.3 m installation.
Installation view at the Japan Pavilion, The 48th Venice Biennale. Courtesy: The Japan Foundation and Scai The Bath-
house, Tokyo, Japan.
Death, like the cipher zero, is a dynamic paradox of division and unity, of
finality and redemption.
3. Rene Rietmeyer: Proof of Existence

Rene Rietmeyer (* 1957, Netherlands) creates abstract, three-dimensional
wall objects. His so-called “Boxes” can be presented singly (see, for example,
his Life from 2007, Figure 10), but more often they are hung in installations
of various numbers of items. Additionally, decisions regarding the configura-
tion and numbers of Boxes are taken anew in each exhibition space.
Time here is less articulate; Rietmeyer’s work is more about his existence
within time and space and refers to people, cities, and regions. The Boxes do
not simply represent the visual appearance of the subjects, but rather they cre-
ate a certain atmosphere. They convey Rietmeyer’s emotional relationship to
the subject through form, color, texture, composition, and choice of materials.
For Rietmeyer, the subjective, personal character of the work outweighs
any aesthetic experience for the viewers: “The emotionality and subjectivity
of my concept are an expression of my own existence and personality. I create
an atmosphere that mirrors my very personal subjective thoughts about the
subject.”39 The Boxes ‘contain’ Rietmeyer’s thoughts and express the experi-
ence of a specific region or—as with his Portrait of Joseph Kosuth (Figure 11)—a
specific person he met at a certain place and time. He expresses himself with
abstract means; Joseph Kosuth’s portrait comprises a bold statement with an
initial vibrant red surface color, subsequently covered with a thick, strong
white. The artist says that this type of portraiture is not so radically different
from the portraits of Van Gogh or Nicolas de Stael. Only the imagery itself
has developed through time, and he uses his own abstract language. The
objects reflect Rietmeyer’s thoughts on a subject and, simultaneously, admit
something about him, regardless of whether the result is aesthetically pleasing
or not: “Ultimately, my work is nothing other than the proof of my existence.”40
In this way, the Boxes resemble the 30,000 year old hand print in the Chauvet
cave in France.
Each series of Boxes has a year connected to it. The image of Kosuth origi-
nates from 2008. Rietmeyer’s current installation of the Kosuth Boxes, based
on his 2010 meeting with Kosuth, is slightly different from its predecessor:
39
40
Ibid., 137.
Figure 10. Rene Rietmeyer, Life #32, 2007, ceramic and glace, 16 × 16 × 21 cm.
Courtesy: the artist.
Figure 11. Rene Rietmeyer, Portrait of Joseph Kosuth, Roma, September 2008.
In this series there is a total of 72 Boxes, all of which show several variations of
white and red oil paint on wood. Each installation varies in size and may contain
any number of Boxes. Each Box is 25 × 25 × 19 cm. Courtesy: the artist.
still white and bold, but a little softer. As the artist explained at a much earlier
period in his career, “That ‘same’ experience at another moment in time, the
creation and execution of the series shortly after or much later, would unavoid-
ably lead to a different result.”41 In this way, Rietmeyer considers each work as
a unique moment of (auto)biography, a temporal experience captured in material
and dimensional space. Although visually they might be different, conceptually
Rietmeyer is similar to Opalka. For both artists, time is infinite (for Rietmeyer
in both directions), ongoing in one direction regardless of our life and without
repetition. Where Opalka focuses on continuation, Rietmeyer distills the
moment, the ‘here and now’ experience within an ongoing, infinite time.
As the initiator of the project Personal Structures: Time Space Existence, Riet-
meyer is concerned with the nexus of time, space, and existence and refuses to
isolate time from these other two conditions. Nevertheless, time makes itself
felt in his work as an awareness of its intensity and pressure. Rietmeyer empha-
sizes the subjective character of his work: it is about his thoughts, his emo-
tions, his awareness of both the passing of his time and the private space
surrounding him. Predictably then, he is most deeply concerned with the
passing of his own life-time. Rietmeyer resembles Opalka in metonymizing
his work through his body and by extension his life. Rietmeyer also works to
cultivate in others an awareness of passing time. He therefore initiated the
Personal Structures project to broaden the exposure of his own work and
that of other visual artists, such as Opalka, Miyajima, and others, to a diverse
constituency.
Because Rietmeyer’s work deliberately tries to create an atmosphere that
will trigger a dialogue of sorts, he anticipates how others respond to certain
colors. While color may be subjective, most people would pair red with
passion and grey with contemplation, rather than the other way around.
At the symposium TIME, Rietmeyer explains this relation to his work Life
(Figure 10):
For these Boxes I choose the color red because it is human and has a strong presence.
I chose the size, compact; and I chose the material, ceramic, because ceramic lasts a
long time, longer than wood. Within all their formal elements, with all their subjectiv-
ity, these ceramic Boxes represent all my thoughts, me as a total entity. These Boxes,
Life, are proof of my existence. They capture my awareness of the time I could not
41
Peter Lodermeyer, Personal Structures: Works and Dialogs (New York, Global Art Affairs
Publishing, 2003), 136.
witness myself as well as my personally experienced Life-Time. And, after I myself

have died, each Life Box will continue to exist and communicate.42
For Rietmeyer, then, red is not primarily symbolic of passion or life, but plays
a more concentrated role representing his life. Red in this way is a memorial
color for human and for individual existence. The Boxes will remain long
after the artist has died, and the red will testify to his work and his life. The
color will ‘remember’ him. As well, red connects to its historical use and in this
way the artist inserts himself in an historical time line: “So when I choose a
color, the choice is always a combination of my momentary emotional condi-
tion and of the knowledge I gained about human thoughts made in the past.
[. . .] With my consciously taken choices, I express myself and my awareness
about human history and the history before humans, my awareness about
Time.”43 Connecting the dots along the historical time line is less about story
and event than about the emotional response to color and form. One could
say that while red denotes life’s passion, its ‘body’ as well as its death, the cube/
box form represents the single container of a life, with its walls and enclosures,
its shape and its contents. A box enacts the paradox of being entirely ‘there’
as identifiable shape, obstacle even, yet able not only to perform its ability
to contain but simultaneously also to hide this interior. The box’s composition
ensures its longevity but also compels us by contrast to acknowledge our
mortality.
Expressing the present

Rietmeyer’s work is the expression of his personal reflection in and on time.
Although the artist sometimes makes the work months after the experience,
the Boxes represent an accumulation of impressions of the specific time and
location of the work’s genesis: whether it was hot or cold, the artist’s financial
situation or physical state, a combination of predetermined choices and the
situation during the actual making of the work. This combination is an expres-
sion of the present. Biography is part of this process then. A Box series such
as the beautiful Miami Beach (Figure 12) was in process for several years dur-
ing the artist’s sojourn there. Learning about the area during this period
affected the conception and execution of the work. Disregarding world events,
Rietmeyer focuses on his own life. He is unapologetically straightforward
42
43
Ibid., 30.
about this: “My objects become what they become. Always. Each Box I make
is a honest result of me, my existence at that moment in time and space, an
object from that specific time in my life.”44 In contrast to other Box series
Rietmeyer has made, those comprising Miami Beach, March and September
2006 each is painted on canvas and has strong, vibrant colors. In terms of
Rietmeyer’s personal connection to the work, each colored box functions as a
biography of the artist’s time during that specific year. One could say that the
boxes materially represent the artist’s attempt to capture his thoughts and feel-
ings but without recourse to pictorial narrative. Art can show; it cannot tell.
This intense and personal focus on his lifetime is not, however, self-promot-
ing; Rietmeyer positions himself in the larger art historical landscape: “With
this position within time, I mean: knowledge about the thoughts of other art-
ists I communicate with, but also the knowledge about thoughts and works of
artists who are already dead. Knowledge about us, mankind, about the world
and the space and time we live in. The thoughts standing at the origin of the
intellectual decision about how to construct my work come from somewhere.
That origin is to be found in the time that has passed.”45 In this way, Rietmeyer
expresses not only the time he himself experiences but also the time he has not
witnessed: it is a combination of what he calls “self-experienced” and “non
self-experienced time.”46 “All the knowledge I gained from such people who
lived before my personal, consciously experienced time, have helped me in
creating my own thoughts about all the formal elements I use to make my
works.”47 Rietmeyer refuses to romanticize or sentimentalize his work, prefer-
ring a realistic encounter with the progression of his experiences. Acknowledg-
ing also a time before his own birth, he situates himself in a temporal timeline
similar to that of Opalka: he sees his human life as a miniscule part of this
relentless, continuous, linear time line. But unlike Opalka, this infinite time is
without a beginning or an end. Time IS. Just as numerals are universal, so too
is the box shape ubiquitous. As well, these two expressions are distinctly
human constructions; they enact both a human presence and absence; their
‘thereness’ is the product of human history and personal life, even without the
presence of the individual agent.
Although he understands time as being infinite, Rietmeyer’s Boxes focus
mainly on the past: his work originates in actual experiences. According to
44
45
Ibid., 28.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid., 30.
Figure 12. Rene Rietmeyer, Miami Beach, March and September 2006, oil on
canvas on wood. Each installation varies in size and may contain any number
of Boxes. Each Box 20 × 23 × 18 cm. Courtesy: collection Mr. and Mrs. Levy,
Palm Beach, USA & the artist.
Figure 13. Rene Rietmeyer, USA, Siesta Key, May 2008. In this series is a total
of 92 Boxes. All Boxes are made from several variations of red oil paint on
wood. Each Box is approximately 18 × 18 × 13 cm. Each installation varies in
size and may contain any number of Boxes. Courtesy: the artist.
him, the conscious experience of something in the future is unthinkable as a

subject. Thus, “we humans perceive time only as a result of memory. If we had
no conscious memory, we would not be aware of time at all; we would only see
the Now. The result of having memory and the creation of our way of measur-
ing time cause our perception of time to appear as a line.”48
In a work such as USA, Siesta Key, May 2008 (Figure 13) the viewer con-
fronts red boxes, exquisitely positioned in perfect symmetry. Since ‘boxes’ con-
ventionally act as containers, an encounter with this work situates the viewer
in—as some have described it
a frustrating performance of looking but not knowing, of seeing but not opening. The
three-dimensionality of the boxes acts as a further defiance. There is volume but no
hope of access. The precise orchestration of the boxes, their mathematical shape and
positioning, all recall artistic intervention. The unnaturalness of the work’s geometrical
exactitude celebrates a conquest over human mortality. The uneven red color and the
shadows cast by the boxes testify to the struggle of this expression of life over its even-
tual end.49
The passing of lifetime

Rietmeyer concentrates on one’s vital point in time as well as on the passing
of that lifetime. This tension between moment and passage brings with it an
acute attentiveness to life’s brevity. Rietmeyer described this awareness as we
were standing together in front of the house of the American artist Robert
Rauschenberg (1925-2008) in Captiva Florida, just a few days after his death:
“An intense consciousness about Time, Space and Existence puts your own
existence in a larger perspective, shows you how small you are, makes you real-
ize the importance and beauty of being alive and makes you aware and accept
the ‘finalness’ of death.”50 Rietmeyer related how Rauschenberg once told him
something that had left a deep impression: when Rauschenberg was younger,
he had believed that there was not enough world for him to discover. During
his conversation with Rietmeyer and conscious of the fact that he would soon
die, Rauschenberg admitted: “I am running out of time.”51 For Rietmeyer, a
response to the swiftness of time is as direct as the viewer’s engagement with
the boxes: “encounter your surroundings as aware, conscious and open-minded
48
49
Correspondence with Claudia Clausius, Dec. 2010.
50
51
Ibid., 30.
as possible.” He adds: “Time itself does not stop. We just cease to exist.”52
By contrast, the Boxes remain. Indeed, his art justifies and redeems the harsh
brevity of human life against on-going time:
Being alive, sensing Life itself, is a fantastic feeling and stimulates many possibilities
for activities. Being aware that there actually is no reason for our existence does not
exclude that we could, or even should, do something beautiful, something good, with
our existence. Life is precious and should not be taken for granted; having encounters
with the world, with other living beings can be fantastic, if you are capable of seeing
the beauty in the ‘otherness’. There is so much to see, so much to experience, life is
much, much too short; it is a pity that I will have to die.53
When I asked Rietmeyer about the difference between him and Opalka, he
replied with acerbic and humorous poignancy:
[. . .] everybody’s understanding of Time will at least slightly differ. I relate to Time

naturally mainly in relation to my own life-time, and my thoughts do not differ with
Roman’s thoughts when it is about the ongoingness of time, and both Roman and I
are very aware that our personal life-time will come to an end, but I will die and my
life-time really comes to an end, my life-time stops. Roman however—he will die and
go into infinity because he will not hear anybody, including himself, saying “Roman,
you are dead.”54
Conclusion
In this article I have discussed three artists investigating the dynamics of time
in their artistic practice: Roman Opalka, Tatsuo Miyajima and Rene Rietmeyer.
Leaving aside any conclusions, I have tried to show the various aspects of tem-
porality that are, at least for these three artists, critical in their personal inter-
pretation of time. In these instances of contemporary art, time is understood
and possessed through a responsiveness to life’s limited span, especially in
comparison with the infinity of time in general. The predictable ‘end’ of our
own time demands our enjoyment of the moment. Promoting this awareness
of time, together with a wish to leave a trace of themselves, is one of the main
reasons for the impetus to create the art work.
52
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid., 399.
References
De Jongh, Karlyn and Sarah Gold. Roman Opalka: Time Passing. Leiden, Netherlands: Global
Art Affairs Foundation, 2011.
Lodermeyer, Peter, Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold. Personal Structures: Time—Space—
Existence. Cologne, Germany: DuMont, 2009.
Lodermeyer, Peter. Personal Structures: Works and Dialogs. New York: Global Art Affairs Publish-
ing, 2003.
Miyajima, Tatsuo. http://www.tatsuomiyajima.com/en/text/void.html.
——. http://tatsuomiyajima.com/en/text/megadeath.html.

Time Kawara

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Time Kawara

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 brill.

Time in the Art of Roman Opalka,

way, thereby actively demonstrating a wide diversity of temporal engagements.

Paintings—is likely the most well known: a monochrome ground on which

similarities show a general tendency in thinking about time in art. In this

1. Roman Opalka: A Monument to Nonsense

Figure 1. Roman Opalka, Opalka 1965/ 1-∞, Detail 893147-918553 (detail),

Figure 2. Roman Opalka in front of his painting at the Exhibition Personal

Figure 3. Roman Opalka, Opalka 1965/1-∞, Portrait, Undat. Photograph,

Figure 4. Roman Opalka, Opalka 1965/1-∞, Portrait, Undat. Photograph,

Poland’s socialist climate was instrumental in developing Opalka’s concept.

Being toward death

life. This attentiveness to death avoids morbid despair by illuminating an obli-

2. Tatsuo Miyajima: LEDS Equal Life

Miyajima’s ‘The Life’ is an English translation of the Japanese ‘Inochi,’ which

unimaginable inﬁnitude, possible but inconceivable. Reﬂecting that zero

The awareness of time: Art in You

Figure 7. Tatsuo Miyajima, Pile up Life No. 6, 2008, 84 × 64 × 64 cm.

According to the calculation of Brejinsky, Presidential aide to former US President

3. Rene Rietmeyer: Proof of Existence

witness myself as well as my personally experienced Life-Time. And, after I myself

Expressing the present

him, the conscious experience of something in the future is unthinkable as a

The passing of lifetime

[. . .] everybody’s understanding of Time will at least slightly diﬀer. I relate to Time

Вам также может понравиться