Messinstrument für Zeitlosigkeit I

The oversize, drawn circle—reminiscent of a clock face—is divided into 60 arc minutes. Thin threads radiate from the center, stretched to the outer markings of the circle, where they radically change their direction and fall vertically. Each of the threads is fitted with a pendulum which hangs almost motionless over the floor. In this manner, every minute of the diagrammatic artwork appears to be anchored in the here and now.

Does this instrument depict the compression of time, or rather document its extinction? Do the threads, like an imaginary clock hand, trace the fragile framework of time within which we move, hour for hour? With this work, Klaus Rinke—the renowned concept artist and former professor at the Düsseldorf Academy of the Arts—has created a harmonious, symmetrical construction which combines pictorial and sculptural strategies within the field of tension between space and surface. In doing so, he translates the abstract notion of time(lessness) into a work of art, drawing on the customary symbolic interpretation of clock and pendulum.