ART CITIES:Hong Kong-Darren Almond

Darren Almond’s diverse practice incorporates film, installation, sculpture and photography, to produce evocative meditations on time and duration as well as the themes of personal and historical memory. The artist is interested in the notions of geographical limits and the means of getting there – in particular, culturally specific points of arrival and departure.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: White Cube Gallery Archive

For “Time and Being” the first solo exhibition of Darren Almond at the White Cube in Hong Kong, the artist presents among others two new series of paintings and new sculpture. From Almond’s very first live-broadcast work in 1996 titled “A Real Time Piece”, to later video and photographic works, an understanding of “time and being” has been at the core of his practice. This exhibition continues this interest and addresses what it means to exist in both real and fictional realms of temporality. In the ground floor gallery, three flip clock sculptures and a series of multi-panel mirror pieces remind us that the language of numbers both underscores and unifies our everyday lives, from financial institutions to the positioning of planets and stars. These clock sculptures, whose mechanisms are syncopated to digital time, display numbers that have been laterally bisected. This abstraction of the ten numbers, serves not only to highlight their origin in the Arabian decimal system, but also generates a new algorithm for reading time. Each work is configured within the structure of the grid, whose primary function is as the gateway to the abstract, while the mirror element serves to reflect present time, yet shows a moment past. New paintings of nocturnal landscapes are premiered. During a full-moon photographic shoot in Patagonia in 2013, Almond was captivated by the colour and movement in the night sky. Having already charted the positions of stars in drawings made over a decade earlier, he turned his attention to the dark sky paradox of space itself. Addressing the colours of the void space, Almond interprets Heidegger’s notion of the three dimensions of the universe: the past, present and future. The differing wavelengths of colour gradually reveal themselves the longer they are contemplated, emerging out of a darkened spectrum. Washes of indigo, yellow and temperate red coagulate on the surface of the panels, creating non-homogeneous textures and shapes that radiate and absorb the speckles and constellations of stars, nebulas, auroras and galaxies that emerge from the surface.

Info: White Cube Gallery, 50 Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 29/1-11/3/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, whitecube.com