Christian Marclay: The Clock

Marclay’s The Clock is a study in the perception and notion of time and an exploration of the cinematic and the medium of film. It is a 24-hour study that reveals the numeric footprint of measuring temporality through filmic sequences, deconstructing and reconstructing the sense of reality through a network of diverse but interrelated moving images. The work emerged as a unique marker in the pre-digital era of moving images and cinema,and presented the experience of time and temporality touching upon concepts such as the relation of reality and fiction.

The Clock is a 24-hour video montage of film clips, all of which contain a time stamp. As the images scroll across the screen, they indicate the time, perfectly synchronised with the time zone of the place of projection.

Christian Marclay is well known for his work in a wide range of media, including sculpture, video, photography, collage, performance, and music. Born in San Rafael, California, and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, Marclay studied at the Ecole Supérieure d'Art Visuel in Geneva, the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and Cooper Union in New York.

For more than 30 years, he has been exploring the connections between the visual and the audible, creating works in which these two distinct sensibilities enrich and challenge each other. 

Marclay's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally including solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010), Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2010), Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2011), Barbican Art Gallery, London (2005), MAMCO, Geneva (2008), SFMoMA, San Francisco (2002), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2001), Kunsthaus, Zurich (1997), Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva (1995), among others.