In General – Page 2 – dArt International Magazine

July 19, 2026

A Return to Our Magical Mythological Origins

by Chunbum Park

The Art of Cross-Cultural, Trans-Atlantic Friendship and the Return to Our Magical Mythological Origins, New Paltz, NY

Artists and visitors at Villa Isis. Photo Credit: Chunbum Park

At Villa Isis, a gallery in the woods that also functions as a creative retreat, Lise Ellingsen curates an exhibition of 20+ artists and film directors as a form of cultural exchange and bonding of relations. This cross-cultural event sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General New York and in collaboration with Oscar Galleri from Norway is a trans-Atlantic gesture of friendship between the Nordic countries and the United States.

Titled, Villa Isis: A Nordic-New York Immersive Art Experience, the exhibition features the works of Jens Lien, Anja Breien, Eva Davidova, Tatiana Florival, Anki King, Avani Patel, Yasmeen Abdallah, Lisa Saeboe, Shayna Strype, Eliza Lu Doyle, Kristin Jacobsen, Karine Ruud, Lise Ellingsen, Avery Syrig, and additional invited artists.

The scope of the exhibition includes works of painting, sculpture, and immersive VR and video projection, which occupy spaces out in the open amongst the foliages and within the interior of the gallery. The works all communicate with one another and inscribe experiences and new thoughts within the viewers in a complex ecosystem and web of ideas and meanings.

Anki King - “Human Nature” (2026), branches and vines over armature, 72 x 12 x 8 inches. Photo Credit: Fred Hatt — Anki King, “Human Nature” (2026), branches and vines over armature, 72 x 12 x 8 inches. Photo Credit: Fred Hatt

Anki King’s Human Nature is a sculptural installation made with branches and vines over armature that merges seamlessly with its natural surroundings. The work reimagines humanity’s DNA in the vegetal form requiring a magical power to transform into it. The vegetal and natural body representing a young woman is neither a prison nor a limitation; it is a type of liberation as if the person is waking up from a dream into the reality of the natural realm. The lack of arms on the figure is a part of the metaphor that captures the essence of existence for the vegetal forms existing in nature. This is just as flowers and trees lack upper appendages and digital manipulators (aka hands with fingers) and must rely purely on communication via pollens and other chemical signals. In the installation, the sculpture is lit with a red light for nighttime viewing and is surrounded by leaves and branches, the boundary to which is indistinguishable from the sculpture’s idea as the self.

Lise Ellingsen, “Auðumbla” (2023), 3D printed polylactic acid, resin, paint, polymer clay, faux snow and grass, tree and video projections and screens, archaic claw machine led and black lights, 20 x 30 x 20 feet. Photo Credit: Chunbum Park

Lise Ellingsen’s Auðumbla (2023) is an ambitious sculptural installation involving lights, resin pieces, and a TV screen that illustrate the Nordic mythology of the primeval cow who fed the primordial frost jötunn Ymir milk. It is also said that Auðumbla, which is pronounced as “eidoombla” in English, also licked and dissolved the salty rime rocks to reveal Búri, the grandfather of the gods. In the work, we see the cow extending a giant tongue to lick away at the rock, surrounded by scattered and glowing mushrooms. The digital screen displays a repeating spiral pattern perhaps to visually represent the process and the sensation of touch and taste by the gigantic corpus linguae. This work along with Anki King’s Human Nature and others positions the exhibition as a space for contemporary reinterpretation of and re-engagement with the magical and mythological origins and perception of humanity. This is the aesthetic and symbolic realm and narrative mode that had existed for tens or hundreds of thousands of human existence before the rise of science and technology in the modern era, which shattered those realms.

Kristin Jacobsen - “SMASH” (2026), photography mounted on aluminum mesh, dimensions variable (20 pieces sized A2 with metallic hanging. Photo Credit: Kristin Jacobsen — Kristin Jacobsen, “SMASH” (2026), photography mounted on aluminum mesh, dimensions variable (20 pieces sized A2 with metallic hanging. Photo Credit: Kristin Jacobsen

Kristin Jacobsen, a photographer and gallerist from Oslo, Norway, installs her signature piece titled, SMASH (2026), from the upper height of a tall tree. The installation is made from twenty A2 photographs mounted on aluminum mesh and crumpled like discarded pieces of paper. The aluminum metal furnishes the piece with a sense of permanency and longevity, which the photographs printed on paper would lack. And the photographs imbue the work with internal raw visual materials that add substance and narrative to the ideation and production process by the artist. The work is very much about the process of creativity. Why did the artist use the metaphor of the act of smushing the photographs? Jacobsen appears to reflect on the fact that the process of creativity involves steps of aesthetic and visual selection, in which additions of the ideal and the subtraction of the unideal take place. What works and what doesn’t in the final image or product? This may be a dangerous habit of artists that, when applied to the sociopolitical realm, results in evil policies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan around the time of World War II. The work serves as reversal of this habit and process of selection amongst the artists, in which the artist destroys photographs, whether her own or found, equally and without saving the favorites, as a form of expression and questioning.

Eva Davidova, “AR Dancer with Plants” (2024), augmented reality animation, dimensions variable. Photo Credit: Chunbum Park

Eva Davidova’s AR Dancer with Plants utilizes augmented reality technology on a camera-equipped camera to project a dancing figure of a vegetal humanoid onto a circular grouping of stones. The augmented reality depicts not only a dancer but also the flowers and trees standing by the dancer. Davidova’s piece gives life and agency to the natural surroundings on figurative terms to which humans can relate, serving as a bridge between the human imagination and the natural realm. The work, which is technologically-based, traverses several domains, including the human, the symbolic, the metaphorical, the natural, and the electronic machine. As a result, the installation is a reaction against our word-based thinking and preconceptions that box us into rigid thinking, preset definitions, and binaries of opposition. Davidova’s art turns out to be not just an art or a 3D rendering, but it is a creature and a vegetal life form with a life force that exists within the symbolic and aesthetic realm of not just human but also the imagination of all life in the form of atoms per posthumanist theory and pananimism.

Villa Isis: A Nordic-New York Immersive Art Experience is a thoughtfully curated exhibition in which the artists’ and curators’ visions interact and engage in a meaningful dialogue for re-imagination and re-examination of our magical and mythological roots. The shifting of boundaries of identity and narratives that cross over multiple realms between the human and nature and the machine allows us to rediscover our potential for spiritual liberation and a means of finding our place in the universe. The exchange between the American and the Nordic artists is an encounter of identities and symbolisms between a locality and a cosmopolitan hybridity (consisting of multicultural origins).

In this communication and exchange, the Nordic artists who come from a particular region and people in Europe have something to teach to the Americans, who originate from all over the world (because the US is a nation of immigrants). While the progressive arm of the US had been a pioneer of the democratic values of diversity and equality, it is now the Europeans who learned the ideological modes of the Americans and are teaching the Americans in turn about their past morally superior position of democratic values and progressive ideals. This position was prior to the rise of Trumpism and MAGA, which destroyed the American stature as the leader of the free world. While the world is greatly turbulent and changed by the rise of right-wing extremism and strongmen, the exchange across the Atlantic is an important channel for communication between the progressively-minded people. This is because we must engage in this kind of gathering and dialogue in order to reflect on our own purpose and reinvigorate our trajectory… of progress in the pursuit of human rights and dignity, equality, democratic and humanist values… for not only humanity but also Mother Earth.

July 10, 2026July 16, 2026

Black Maria and a Fallen Body

by Steve Rockwell

I travelled with my family to Gothenburg, Sweden in 1951, leaving Espoo, Finland, which had been home to my father’s side of the family for at least four generations. My grandfather had been part of a movement to adopt Finnish names, legally shedding his Kristiansson identity for Salomaa. Steve Rockwell, on the other hand, is a creative persona. My mother had believed that Salomaa was entirely the outcome of the 1918 conflict between the Bolshevik Reds and White Finns, where Johan Nestor Kristiansson defected to the Whites. “He rammed his rifle barrel into ground at the base of a tree, and bolted,” my mother recounted.

Kuusta Rovio, the Helsinki police chief, figures into the story here. Rovio not only sheltered Vladimir Lenin in his Helsinki apartment in August of 1917, but supplied him with Russian newspapers and passed on secrets to his party comrades.

Kuusta Rovio, served as Helsinki chief of police during the 1918 revolutionary war

As it turned out, the anti-socialist White forces under Carl Gustaf Mannerheim won a decisive victory in May 1918. Rovio fled to Soviet Russia, becoming a Communist Party official. A victim of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge, he was arrested in 1937 and executed the following year. Meanwhile in Helsinki, the police department bleached its Reds. The armored cruiser Sisu “Black Maria” rolled out in the year of his arrest. After the war in 1945, my father had a job painting “Black Marias” at the Helsinki Police Department. He would have been familiar with the armored Sisu since it served until 1951, the year we left for Sweden.

My father found employment at SKF ball bearing factory in Gothenburg, an obvious choice, as SKF parts would have regularly been shipped to the Helsinki Police Department, civilian cars being retrofitted as police cruisers. To a five-year-old, the sound of a ball bearing smacking and rolling across the floor had been memorable. Swedish engineer Sven Wingquist’s 1907 invention of the modern self-aligning ball bearing had solved shaft misalignment and machine overheating. It resulted in the foundation of Svenska Kullagerfabriken (SKF), paving the way for a new car company, Volvo (Latin for “I roll”).

In 1913 it had been the churning and friction of the chocolate grinder that erotically overheated Marcel Duchamp’s imagination. In Paris that year he produced the first “readymade,” Bicycle Wheel. The term described works that were selected rather than crafted, although the word did not come into use for another two years. Sven Wingquist’s self-aligning ball bearing was featured at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s 1934 Machine Art exhibition in New York City, not as readymade, but a “crafted” object. Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel didn’t appear at the MoMA until 1951, the original wheel not having survived. You can still find Wingquist’s ball bearing piece on display in the David Geffen Wing today.

Sven Wingquist, Self-Aligning Ball Bearing, 1907, Museum of Modern Art, New York City — Sven Wingquist, **Self-Aligning Ball Bearing**, 1907, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Between 1592 and 1610, during his tenure in Padua, Galileo Galilei used ramps to study falling objects, since the high speed of a free-falling entity proved impossible to accurately time. With his “decelerated” brass balls, for instance, observations and measurements were quite feasible. Galileo found that a body fell at the approximate rate of 32 feet per second.

In the case of Vladimir Lenin’s 32 “sealed car” passengers who left Zurich railway station on April 9, 1917 for St. Petersburg, the rate of a falling body is measured in historic terms. The Germans permitted the “sealed train” to cross its territory tactically to destabilize Russia. Within months of arrival at Finland Station, the 1917 October Revolution was successfully staged, giving birth to the Soviet state. Out of the 32 passengers who essentially shaped 20th century as we came to know it, most had by the late 1930s been made enemies of the people, tortured, executed, or been worked to death in the Gulag.

Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale 2017 Henry Holt & Company publishers — **Lenin on the Train**, Catherine Merridale, 2017, Henry Holt & Company publishers

Lenin on the Train had been passed on to me by a couple at the Crane Beach Resort in Barbados some eight years ago. After a poolside chat about reading, I had expressed an interest in the subject. Julia then suggested I pick up the book from the lobby library where they had left it, as it had failed to hold husband David’s interest. It surprised me at the time. Learning that David had just previously been the publisher of Toronto Life Magazine, I had assumed a degree of curiosity in the topic. I now see that it had rather been my own tangled family history which had brought the pertinent immediacy to Lenin’s train ride.

Christmas 1954 we travelled back to Espoo to visit my grandmother on her death bed. Emilia Karolina Salomaa passed away shortly into the new year at the age of 91. The visit entailed a 25-mile train ride through Porkkala, a Soviet naval base. At the western Espoo checkpoint, armed Soviet soldiers boarded the train for document inspection. Heavy shutters were fastened over all carriage windows from the outside. The Finnish steam engine was uncoupled and replaced by a Soviet one, which guided the train through the military zone. Memorable to a nine-year-old was the complete darkness and strict instructions to not look outside or move about the train for the next hour. This had been my own “sealed car” passenger train experience, separated by the one by Vladimir Lenin by just 37 years.

July 8, 2026July 14, 2026

The Charles Ray Ink Box and a Heavenly Vision

by Steve Rockwell

In the dArtles column of the Winter 1999 edition of dArt magazine, I wrote, “At the preview bash of Charles Ray’s mid-career retro at MOCA in Los Angeles, Charles himself stood on the patio roof looking down over the party. He didn’t cut through the party vortex and into the show until artist and teacher Roland Brenner arrived.” From that point in my article it became a list of “who’s who” of the LA art world. Some credit for Ray’s success has to go to the Los Angeles art dealer Burnett Miller, who passed away in 2001.

In her December 13, 2001 obituary for the LA Times, Suzanne Muchnic wrote, “An energetic and insightful entrepreneur who had an eye for quality and a finger on the pulse of contemporary art, Miller is credited with introducing the work of young artists who later achieved international renown. Sculptor Charles Ray – whose travelling retrospective exhibition appeared at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art in 1998 – made a breakthrough at Miller’s gallery in 1987 with Ink Box, a giant black-lacquered metal cube filled with 200 gallons of black printer’s ink.”

Charles Ray installation view of his 1986 Ink Box at the Irvine Museum, Orange County — Charles Ray installation view of his 1986 **Ink Box** at the Irvine Museum, Orange County

Muchnic quotes the Times art critic Christopher Knight, who wrote of its 1990 showing at Newport Harbor Art Museum, “The quivering meniscus of ink that is the top plane of this menacing black cube forms a threatening surface just begging to be touched, even in the face of disaster.”

In his 1995, performance at the Burnett Miller gallery, artist Skip Arnold delivers an obvious homage to Ray’s Ink Box by replacing its “quivering meniscus of ink” with his own quivering flesh. The image featured here was used in an article by Craig Stephens in the Fall 2002 edition of dArt International titled Pollock to Punk: A Conversation with Skip Arnold.

Skip Arnold, On Display, 1995, performed at Burnett Miller Gallery in Santa Monica — Skip Arnold, **On Display**, 1995, performed at Burnett Miller Gallery in Santa Monica

Steve Rockwell, Gallery Space (Shoes), 1988, acrylic, wood floor, shoes, 14 x 14 x 15 inches — Steve Rockwell, **Gallery Space (Shoes**), 1988, acrylic, wood floor, shoes, 14 x 14 x 15 inches

My own synthesis of Ray’s Ink Box and Arnold’s 1995 On Display piece is the sculpture Shoes. It was made in 1988, a year after the Burnett Miller exhibition of Ray’s ground-breaking piece. With the Shoes, Ray’s ink and Arnold’s body evaporate, leaving the residual imprint of black shoes overlaid by black print on plexiglass. In 1997 Burnett Miller consented to be included in my Storage project. A unique feature of the gallery’s Bergamot Station building in Santa Monica was its spectacularly convenient second floor skylight, clearly visible in the top left-hand corner of the Skip Arnold photo, and neatly matched in the top right-hand of Steve Rockwell’s Storage photo.

Steve Rockwell, Storage Bernett Miller, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, 1997, photo by Steve Rockwell — Steve Rockwell, **Storage, Burnett Miller, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica**, 1997, photo by Steve Rockwell

Unaware of the Charles Ray Ink Box until a couple of decades ago, I had produced the progressive “inking” of a six-by-six-inch square in 1987, the year Ray displayed his “inky box” at Burnett Miller. My square was subsequently cubed as the Shoes sculpture the following year in 1988. It took a hundred and thirty-nine people over a period of nine months to complete the “inky” square, the Pick a Number project eventually leading to the publication of dArt International magazine in 1998.

Steve Rockwell, Pick a Number between 1 and 99, 1987, ink on printed bond paper, 42.5 inches x 12 feet 10 inches — Steve Rockwell, **Pick a Number between 1 and 99**, 1987, ink on printed bond paper, 42.5 inches x 12 feet 10 inches

As part of the Meditations on Space project on December 1, 1995, my 36th gallery stop was Mary Boone, then in Soho. The account in the published book work read, “Someone must have been adjusting the lights or changing them. An enormous yellow step ladder rose toward the skylight in the center of the gallery. It made me think of the white ladder in Paris at Galerie Lucien Durand. Ron was busy at the desk by the door wielding a letter opener.” My black and white acrylic portrait staring up at the light suggested layered and cocooned gallery spaces from Paris, New York, and finally Los Angeles.

Steve Rockwell, Meditations on Space (Mary Boone Gallery, New York), 1996, acrylic on panel painting, 32 x 32 inches — Steve Rockwell, **Meditations on Space (Mary Boone Gallery, New York)**, 1996, acrylic on panel painting, 32 x 32 inches

Only more recently, having reflected on the sources of my inspiration, did it land on a “dream vision” that I had in 1970. In it, an angel appeared with a shining solidity that shattered my flesh self to the extent that I presumed it to be the “Angel of Death,” were it not for its kind radiant beauty. Absent of spiritual grounding from my family, I was open to its interpretation. In form and perfection, it exceeded anything by Raphael. To a Catholic, it could clearly have been Mary. Pairing the vision with a definition of “boon,” made it a timely benefit, blessing, or something incredibly helpful and advantageous.

June 19, 2026June 19, 2026

Christopher Rouleau: Selling Canada

by Steve Rockwell

Christopher Rouleau, 2026, 12 Brilliant Colors, Latex, acrylic and enamel on canvas, 54" × 72" — Christopher Rouleau, 2026, **12 Brilliant Colors**, Latex, acrylic and enamel on canvas, 54″ × 72″

The message in Christopher Rouleau’s “12 Brilliant Colors” exhibition is direct. If you don’t get the picture, he spells it out in two languages, each ‘brilliant color’ numbered from one to twelve. The charm of the artist’s work at the Red Head Gallery in Toronto is the absence of ambiguity. Rouleau’s ego never gets in the way of his painted intent. By not wearing his angry, tormented artist tuque, the “Selling of Canada” paintings strike us directly where we live – a “double-double” caffeine-induced sugar rush from a Tim Hortons cup of coffee.

Christopher Rouleau, 2026, Tons, latex and acrylic on plywood, 24 x 18 x 1/2 inch; Ketchup Wars, latex and acrylic on canvas, bubble mailer filling, 36 x 18 x 2 inches; Loss, latex and enamel on canvas-wrapped box, 18 x 18 x 18 inches

To a Canadian, each meticulously-rendered image is a mental billboard along the highway of Canada’s history. As an immigrant kid on my first day at Golden Avenue Public School in South Porcupine, my own pack of “12 Brilliant Colors” landed on my desk on the first day of school. That’s how I remember it – cellophane-wrapped pencil crayons with a picture of a snow-covered log home below the word “Laurentian,” loosely-lettered in red.

The “Selling of Canada” has continued unabated since its confederation in 1867. In fact, even before there was a Canada there was Rupert’s Land. French fur traders Radison and Groseilliers learned that the best furs were found around the “frozen sea” of Hudson Bay. Since the French governor refused to back their plan to set up a trading post on the Bay, one thing led to another, until the fur trading duo got an audience with England’s Charles II through Prince Rupert, the king’s cousin. And the rest is history: the “Selling of Canada” began in earnest by the Hudson’s Bay Company with an act of government in 1689. “Made Beaver” became not just a brand but a commercial trading standard.

Christopher Rouleau's "Selling Canada" installation view — Christopher Rouleau’s “Selling Canada” installation view

Rouleau’s “12 Brilliant Colors” are rooted in the beauty of the land itself, here specifically the Quebec Laurentians, a crayon for every month of the year. A century ago, the Group of Seven placed a national stamp over the color and texture over Canada’s landscape. Influenced importantly by Tom Thomson, the Group expanded northward through Algoma beyond Lake Superior to the Rockies and the Arctic. To the east Quebec’s Charlevoix and Laurentian regions supplied the drama of shoreline and mountain. Branded into the consciousness these images in oil served as advertisement readymades for Canadian National and Pacific railways to sell travel across “Scenic Canada.” If going by car, vacationers might as well ride on “Canadian Tires.”

Christopher Rouleau, 2026, HBCanadian Tire, Latex and acrylic on canvas, 30" × 60" — Christopher Rouleau, 2026, **HBCanadian Tire**, Latex and acrylic on canvas, 30″ × 60″

While Rouleau’s “Selling Canada” works are admittedly nostalgic, tapping into decades of collective memory, their insinuation casts a deeper, more complex shadow. As hieroglyphs of national identity, by virtue of their visual familiarity, the viewer is rendered essentially defenceless to their impact. Much like the work of Jeff Koons, Rouleau’s paintings here are “critic-proof.” To whatever might be said about his show, an apt response by the artist might simply be, “I intended it.”

To some extent, Rouleau even seems not to be “wedded” to the paintings on display. “Selling Canada” may be read as a sample documentation of slices from our environment, mechanically reproduced. As the artist’s “Christopher” business card reads: “lettering, signs, graphic design,” implying that if the viewer were not impressed with the paintings display, he would be happy to provide ones more suitable to their taste.

Selling Canada: Guest Artist Christopher Rouleau, May 27 – June 20, 2026 at the Red Head Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5V 3A8

April 7, 2026April 7, 2026

Time and Materials

by Federico Lynch Ferraris

Nadia Coen, Mahmoud Hamadani, Armita Raafat, Michael David, Andrew Huston, Alyse Rosner, Paul Michael Graves, Bodo Korsig, Steven Salzman, Margaret Weber, Mark Williams
at Bienvenu Steinberg & C in New York City

Across painting, sculpture, and installation, “Time and Materials” highlights the use of unconventional materials – glass, resin, plastic straws, fabrics, and carpets – to create works that are both temporal and tactile. Many of the works lean abstract, inviting the viewer to consider the significance embedded in the use of obscure materials and the progression of time encoded in the art.

Paul Michael Graves, Fig. CXXXVIII., 2024, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in, 121.9 x 121.9 cm — **Paul Michael Graves**, Fig. CXXXVIII., 2024, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in, 121.9 x 121.9 cm

The exhibition repeatedly emphasizes material experimentation as an outlet for interdisciplinary expression. Paul Michael Graves’ pieces play with the intersection between art and his previous career as a helicopter pilot. Composed of black dots and lines set across a bronze background, the pieces evoke the visual components of aerial map making. Initially appearing abstract, the artwork deliberately uses the black marks to resemble plotted coordinates and flight paths as seen from above. Graves’ interpretation of time reflects the broader theme of the unique experience of time. The pieces display time and duration through flight paths rather than fixed units.

Mahmoud Hamadani’s geometric compositions similarly gesture towards his mathematical foundations. In his untitled work, Hamadani arranges nine black frames into a square. Within each frame, seven diamonds are uniquely oriented, with each diamond representing a day of the week. The subtle variations within each frame mirror the rhythms and changes of days and weeks. Continuing the larger theme of time interpreted through interdisciplinary practices, Hamadani’s geometric orientations suggest that time is measured, rhythmic, and symmetrical through a mathematical lens.

Installation view with work by Steven Salzman's Steaws III and Straws X (left), and Andrew Huston's Days of the week (right) — Installation view with work by **Steven Salzman**‘s Steaws III and Straws X (left), and **Andrew Huston**‘s Days of the week (right)

Andrew Huston continues the use of geometric shapes to portray time. With seven panels, each filled with gold pigment and black dots, the artwork represents the seven days of the week. Although the panels are fixedly aligned to emulate calendar pages, each panel is distinct. The variation among the series of panels emphasises the unpredictability of time despite the expected rhythm of the week.

Armita Raafat, Untitled, 2019, resin, paper mâché, tiles, fabric, mesh tiles, fabric, mesh, and acrylic, 38 x 80 x 7 in, 96.5 x 203.2 x 17.8 cm — **Armita Raafat**, Untitled, 2019, resin, paper mâché, tiles, fabric, mesh tiles, fabric, mesh, and acrylic, 38 x 80 x 7 in, 96.5 x 203.2 x 17.8 cm

Armita Raafat’s portrayal of time draws on a more fluid interpretation, by contrast. Raafat draws on traditional Muqarnas while reimagining it with vivid, unconventional materials. Composed of resin, tiles, and fabrics, the work revisits traditional architecture with a modern perspective, suggesting that time, rather than being fixed, can be actively returned to and reconsidered. The piece, being an extension of Raafat’s inquiry into Muqarnas, maintains the ongoing theme of interests and passions altering perception of time found throughout the exhibition.

Bodo Korsig, Tears of Silence, 2023, 7.9 × 10.2 in, 20 x 26 cm — **Bodo Korsig**, Tears of Silence, 2023, 7.9 × 10.2 in, 20 x 26 cm

Bodo Korsig’s “Zerspringen des Zustandes”, which translates from German to “Shattering of the State”, approaches the theme of time through one moment of rupture. The work suggests that time does not only unfold – it snaps. The “shattering” becomes a moment when continuity is lost, and a new state abruptly emerges. This interpretation of time aligns with Korsig’s focus on human behavior under extreme conditions. In moments of fear or violence, mental states often do not erode over time; they shatter instantly. The piece introduces the irreversibility of time and its capacity to collapse into a single moment of change. In contrast to other works in the exhibition, which focus on the cycle and rhythm of time, Korsig centers its immediacy and instantaneity.

Alyse Rosner, From Wind or Sky or Myth (quiet pink), 2025, acrylic on raw pine, 6 x 5.5 in, 15.2 x 14 cm — **Alyse Rosner**, From Wind or Sky or Myth (quiet pink), 2025, acrylic on raw pine, 6 x 5.5 in, 15.2 x 14 cm

Michael David, The Batman, 2023-26, mirrored glass, silicone, fabric, glitter, acrylic and oil paint on wooden panels, 147 x 82 x 6 in, 373.4 x 208.3 x 15.2 cm — **Michael David**, The Batman, 2023-26, mirrored glass, silicone, fabric, glitter, acrylic and oil paint on wooden panels, 147 x 82 x 6 in, 373.4 x 208.3 x 15.2 cm

Alyse Rosner’s piece, “From Wind or Sky or Myth (shadow)” evokes the visual intensity of fireworks – brief yet expansive bursts that unfold simultaneously – suggesting that time is not a singular passing instant, but a convergence of multiple moments occurring at once.
Some works do not specifically reference time, however. Instead, they fall under the exhibition’s material aspect. Michael David, for example, uses nontraditional materials such as glass, silicone, fabric, and glitter in his work, “The Batman”. Innovative uses of various materials are also present in the works of Nadia Coen, Steven Salzman, Margaret Weber, and Mark Williams.

Margaret Weber, Rivington or Wat, 2025, newspaper (newsprint), oil pastel, dye, acrylic paint, cardboard, 24 x 33.8 in, 61 x 85.7 cm

Mark Williams, PoC 47, 2022, oil, acrylic & pencil on cardboard, 24 x 30 in, 61 x 76.2 cm — **Mark Williams**, PoC 47, 2022, oil, acrylic & pencil on cardboard, 24 x 30 in, 61 x 76.2 cm

The title of the exhibition draws on the policy under which clients pay contractors a fixed amount for the time spent and materials used. In the context of the exhibition, time and material are established as intertwined and in constant conversation.