Ryan Gander
Time Famine Markers
All bids
Year | 2020 |
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Medium | Ink on paper |
Dimensions | 29.7 x 21.1 cm |
Top pick | Russell Tovey, actor and Talk Art host |
About the work
I’ve become preoccupied with the passage of time and the rates of change… time it seems to me is the subject of our time and the privilege of hindsight the greatest superpower.
In many cultures the candle as you know is used as a measuring tool of time, much like a clock. It was from that perspective that I started to draw, again and again, daily and almost obsessively. I try to draw candles and the moment they are extinguished. A moment of frozen time that is both impossible and futile to attempt to capture. I love the candle as a motif and a sign, its heavy handed cliche and stereotypical readability is endearing. Romance, birthday cakes, religious rights, medieval castles, bohemian parties, lofty scholars working on manuscripts, cave dwellings, a motif for peace, a motif of belief… the list of significations is endless and saturated with sentimentally. The greatest and the worst emoji. Also, as someone who categorically cannot draw, the perfect economical rendering of a candle at the moment it went out seems like a good life time project to dedicate myself to… unless my ability improves, in which case I’ll move onto a lightbulb or something else that might be illuminating for me.