I love: Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay's latest work at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York has inspired me to think about someone whom I've often cited as one of my favorite artists.

I first experienced Christian Marclay's work in 2003 at the Armand Hammer museum in Westwood, California. This show presented a wide body of his work, and presented him as an artist that explored time, repetition, and sound through sculpture, film, and collage.

My favorite piece of his was, and still is 'Tape Fall', which is a reel-to-reel tape player placed high on a ladder. The audiotape spills down from the player from what appears always to be an infinite spool. The tape creates soft piles around the steps of the ladder, whilst your aural senses are surrounded by the stereo sound of a dripping faucet. I've seen this twice now, both at the Armand Hammer, and later at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. (Something I've always loved is meeting up with a work of art in different cities--those reunions always feel magical to me.)

TAPE FALL, 1989, Christian Marclay

Up until the show at the Paula Cooper Gallery, however, my experience in New York with Christian Marclay had been limited to PS1.

I first saw his site specific work at PS1 about 10 years ago, then saw it again on a larger scale last year. This latest installation, '2822 Records', was a room floored in exactly that: 2822 records. It's my favorite kind of art: simple and repetitive. Mesmerizing.



Mesmerizing doesn't do his latest work, "The Clock", justice. This 24-hour film is a montage of dialogue, inter-cut with shots of clocks, watches and anything else that can tell time. Each minute in the film syncs up with the very minute that one is experiencing in real time. I went back to see it twice, once at three in the morning, and again on a rainy Saturday afternoon. It's a meditation on time. If it comes to your city--see it.