A new exhibition at the Israel Museum will feature Christian Marclay's video work, The Clock (2010) first premiered last year in London and presented in New York, Los Angeles, Venice, and Moscow.  On loan from the artist, this internationally acclaimed masterwork of video art is composed of thousands of film excerpts illuminating the passage of time by means of time-related references, among them images of clocks, watches, or announcements identifying specific times of the day. Marclay extracted each of these moments from its original context to form a 24-hour montage that unfolds according to his reconstruction in real time.

 

The Clock

Twenty-four-hour screenings have attracted long lines and captivated audiences, with many viewers staying to absorb the work for hours at a time. Marclay won the coveted Golden Lion award at the 2011 Venice Biennale, where The Clock was featured in the Biennale’s central exhibition. The work will begin its first Israeli screening at the Israel Museum on August 23 and will remain on view through October 20, 2011.

Synchronized with local time at each exhibition venue, Marclay's The Clock conflates cinematic and actual time, revealing each passing moment as a wellspring of alternately suspenseful, tragic, and romantic narrative possibilities. By referencing actual time specifically, wherever it is on display, The Clock transforms the usual sensation of artificial “cinematic time” into the thrilling sensation of real time in the exhibition gallery.

The Israel Museum’s presentation of The Clock is curated by Suzanne Landau, Yulla and Jacques Lipchitz Chief Curator of the Fine Arts and Landeau Family Curator of Contemporary Art.

The Israel Museum is the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel and is ranked among the leading art and archaeology museums in the world. Founded in 1965, the Museum houses encyclopedic collections ranging from prehistory through contemporary art and includes the most extensive holdings of Biblical and Holy Land archaeology in the world, among them the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 2010, the Museum completed a comprehensive renewal of its campus including the creation of new galleries, orientation facilities, and public spaces, and the complete reinstallation of its encyclopedic collections.

For more information, visit the museum’s website.