When the watch is worn around the neck, it lies in proximity to the less regular beating of the heart
2017
Engraved aluminium
Four pieces, each 14.8 x 10.5cm
This work is an inscription for the exhibition, which has been engraved across four plaques and installed in various permanent and temporary locations within the gallery.
It was made for Walengbach, Isabelle, Faysal, Micha, Robin Hood and 100,000 past exhibitions at Rib, Rotterdam, curated by Maziar Afrassiabi and running from May 12 – July 1, 2017.
For decades Hans Walgenbach dutifully conserved invitations to gallery openings as he received them. With the passing of time, the many hundreds of thousands of formal requests that he amassed have shaped into a collection of tangible relics from an otherwise intangible history. After sitting on it for what seemed like an eternity, Rib and Walgenbach finally decided to recruit helping hands and dust off this archive together. Young locally based international artists Faysal Mroueh, Isabelle Sully and Micha Zweifel were invited to rummage unguided through Walgenbach’s archive. The long-expired invitations originally meant for Walgenbach and his contemporaries years ago are now given a second opportunity to request participation in present exhibitions and spaces. Mroueh, Sully and Zweifel attempt to (re)produce history from the remains they scavenged seemingly at random and present their own interpretations of the moment enshrined by the collection.