Somi Sim’s Concluding Collaboration “Inhabiting Time” Puts Chronological and Architectural Space in Dialog
A year-long project exploring understandings of time winds up at Frieze Los Angeles with a presentation of Gordon Matta-Clark and People’s Architecture Office
A year-long project exploring understandings of time winds up at Frieze Los Angeles with a presentation of Gordon Matta-Clark and People’s Architecture Office
Frieze Los Angeles 2024 sees the final instalment of Korean curator Somi Sim’s year-long collaboration with Breguet, a partnership that centers—appropriately, given the participation of the 250-year-old horological house—on time.
Each edition of the collaboration has focused on a different dimension of time and each has featured two artists. “My reason for approaching artists in pairs for each exhibition is to approach time from multiple perspectives,” explains Sim. “I have curated the exhibitions as a dialogue between two artists, with the connection to Breguet forming the triangle.”
The project began at Frieze New York 2023 with “Orbital Time,” featuring Raqs Media Collective and Ann Lislegaard. It aimed to convey the cultural value of overturning linear time.
At Frieze Seoul, “Streaming Time” with artists Sungseok Ahn and Heemin Chung explored how our contemporary digital culture relates to our perceived reality and parallel time.
“Resisting Time” at Frieze London presented artists Hanne Darboven and Julien Coignet, whose work looked at ways of keeping our own time in an accelerated society.
This final revolution of the clock sees Sim engage with how people singly and collectively experience time, and is entitled “Inhabiting Time.” In the video, Sim explains how this display Frieze Los Angeles, featuring the work of artists Gordon Matta-Clark and People’s Architecture Office, has “a deep resonance in Breguet’s watchmaking history.”
In Matta-Clark’s 1973 film Clockshower the artist ropes himself to a precariously lofty public clock, showering, shaving and sleeping in the lee of its giant dial. Meanwhile, the inflatable, room-defining artworks of People’s Architecture Office intrude into the present, admitting time as a physical, palpable entity, albeit one contained within a fragile, ethereal membrane. These works conclude collaboration in a celebration of what Sim calls “the very intimate human relationship we have to time.”
Further Information
Frieze Los Angeles is at Santa Monica Airport, February 29–March 3, 2024.
Last chance to get tickets to the fair
Frieze In Person membership is now sold out, but there are still limited tickets available to purchase for this weekend. Grab them now before they're gone.
To keep up to date on all the latest news from Frieze, sign up to the newsletter at frieze.com, and follow @friezeofficial on Instagram, Twitter and Frieze Official on Facebook.
