Perpetual Time Clock
20049 tondi of painted wood240 x 240 x 50 cmMai-Thu Perret’s Perpetual Time Clock (2004) is a kind of wall clock for a society that has all but abolished the mechanical measurement of time. According to the artist, this is a clock that could be imagined as a fixture on the wall of a monastery refectory or as the centerpiece of a secular commune. Day after day, it would remind the members of such imagined communities of those essential activities that ideally should divide up their day. These are represented by the pictograms inside the small round panels or tondi symbolizing the creation of art in a studio, interactions with animals, meditation and yoga, reading and studying, the cultivation of food crops, the activation of the unconscious, the pursuit of sports, and, last but not least, sleep. Like many artists of her generation, Perret likes to allude to other works or events from art history in her works. What fascinate her most are those historic moments when artistic, private, and social utopias collide. Thus she references the writings of the Russian Constructivists and follows their biographical trail, while in her own works she seeks dialogue with the forms and languages of art, especially those of the early twentieth century as the period of recent history that art historians call “modernism.” Those of Perret’s works that refer to specific historical events or artistic aspirations do not set out to provide a factual account of them but seek rather to revisit what were perhaps unfulfilled wishes or to take a second look at some of modernism’s defining ideas. The world that Perret ponders in her art, for which she designs objects and paints pictures, and which takes on a more distinctive shape in each new work of hers, is a model society that has no geographical location except in our imagination. In fact, it exists solely as an artist’s blueprint and to that extent is genuinely utopian. Perret’s Perpetual Time Clock lends expression to a wish that we all know and all share, specifically the wish for a daily rhythm of our own choosing and for the discipline to make purposeful use of however many years we are allotted.
Roman Kurzmeyer
