Clock is part of Philippe Parreno's new body of work begun in 2019. It consists of a transparent Plexiglas Clock with three hands animated by a complex mechanism of gears and belts controlled by a DMX recorder.
Like Parreno's Marquees that flicker according to a light sequence, Clock's mechanism moves like an automaton, following its own rhythm and producing a choreography conceived by the artist.
Small microphonesplaced on the motor picks up the sound of the gears of the clock, and sound equipment hidden inside the wall amplifies it, projecting the whirring sound of the object’s own motion into the exhibition space.
Time is an important motif in Parreno’s oeuvre, the image of a clock has appeared in recent years in several works, and his practice has always revolved around investigations of time and duration. For him, an exhibition is an event, intended to produce scenarios that involve the visitor within an ever-evolving choreography. In his exhibitions, time becomes a thing of substance, habitable.