Mandi III
2003
Black metal flipboard
Sies+Höke Gallerie, Düsseldorf
Kris Martin
The experience of time and the desire to comprehend it, whether by marking its passing or transcending the present, plays a significant role in Kris Martin’s works. Their subtle presence compels the viewer to question their own position not only in relation to the work, but also within the broader framework of existence. In 100 Years (2004), a yellow metal ball turns out to be a time bomb that will self-destruct once a century has gone by. The object’s lustrous surface makes it initially attractive, yet the ball’s true “content” gives it a new level of meaning and ambiguity: Who knows whether the ball will really explode in one hundred years, or what its final destiny will be? My Days are Counted (2005) is another way of counting time: Martin tallied the number of days that had passed from his birth to the beginning of the exhibition on the wall of the exhibition space. Every day for the duration of the exhibition the tally is extended. The work functions as evidence of Martin’s – and our own – existence. The enigma of the work, however, lies in the viewer’s own relationship to it, and how he or she becomes aware of how time unfolds spatially.
Martin also gives form a temporal order in Vase (2005), a giant blue and white patterned Chinese porcelain vase that is destroyed and glued back together each time it is exhibited. It is a valuable object but more importantly, with its cracks and signs of wear, it is a materialization of time that evokes a sense of sadness and compassion, for the fate this vase suffers in its constant resurrection. This cycle of death and rebirth, or departure and arrival, is also evident in Mandi III (2003). A black flipboard of the kind usually found in airports and train stations, is programmed to click and flip over randomly, but as it bears neither numbers nor letters it gives no information, no indication of where to go. It has been relieved of its original purpose; this defamiliarization offers the opportunity to reflect on the absence of fixed boundaries, on beginnings and ends of temporality.