Telling Time

The vocab­u­lary of watch­mak­ing uses poetic and evoc­at­ive language to express the pleth­ora of ways employed through the centur­ies to display the time – how about wander­ing hours, myster­i­ous time, digital time, hands in the air or singing hours? Telling Time juxta­poses historic pieces and works by contem­por­ary artists and design­ers, which all share the same desire to tell the time. The more recent creations often build upon and adapt the invent­ive­ness of watch­makers of yesteryear. Artists and design­ers frequently depart from the clas­sic way of telling the time, coming up with often witty vari­ations. All these pieces mark the passing of the hours, and in doing so remind us of time’s inex­or­able onward march.

Although the tools we use continue to evolve, know­ing what time it is and being able to meas­ure its passage remain funda­mental concerns; most people continue to carry some­thing with them to help them tell the time. The exhib­i­tion under­lines watch­mak­ing’s endur­ing vital­ity after more than five hundred years, and demon­strates its extraordin­ary capa­city to innov­ate and rein­vent itself to meet the needs of its partic­u­lar era, from the inven­tion of hands to the biomet­ric sensors of the latest smart­watches.

A dialogue with contem­por­ary art and design
Their features help us to draw paral­lels with contem­por­ary design­ers and plastic artists whose works explore ways of prolong­ing, divert­ing or test­ing the display of time and the passage of time. Gianni Motti counts down the seconds to the time when the sun is expec­ted to explode, in 5 billion years (Big Crunch Clock). Maartens Baas offers a video in which the time is displayed by people sweep­ing up rubbish, in real time (Sweep­ers Clock). John M Armleder rein­ter­prets the idea of a memento mori in a contem­por­ary watch (ART-DNA, Romain Jérôme). Iván Argote counts off the hours and minutes in dollars or euro (Time is Money). Siren Elise Wilhelmsen meas­ures the passage of time by the progress on the scarf knit­ted by her wall clock (365 Knit­ting Clock). Marti Guixé’s timepiece reminds us when it is time to eat by emit­ting food smells at the appro­pri­ate moment (Time to eat). Time is brought bang up to date, explor­ing the oppor­tun­it­ies offered by ingenu­ity, wit, intel­li­gent imit­a­tion and poetry.

Collab­or­a­tions and part­ner­ships
Telling Time brings together a consid­er­able corpus of more than 150 objects from all over Europe. The histor­ical pieces are from both private collec­tions and major public repos­it­or­ies, as well as herit­age collec­tions from manu­fac­tures.

The sceno­graphy is a result of a part­ner­ship with the ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, and is the work of Iris Andreadis, Anna Heck, Pauline Lember­ger and Jérôme Rütsche, all students on the Exhib­i­tion Design course led by indus­trial designer Adrien Rovero.

A book to accom­pany the exhib­i­tion has been produced jointly by the mudac and 5 Contin­ents Editions (Milan). It includes all the works in the exhib­i­tion along with essays by the exhib­i­tion curat­ors and experts in a vari­ety of discip­lines.

Exhib­it­ors
Insti­tu­tions: Musée inter­na­tional d’hor­lo­gerie de La Chaux–de-Fonds, Musée d’hor­lo­gerie du Locle – Château des Monts, Musée de l’hor­lo­gerie Beyer Zurich, Fond­a­tion Edou­ard et Maurice Sandoz,
Ville de Genève, Musée du Louvre, Musée des Arts Décor­at­ifs de Paris,
CNAP – Centre national des arts plastiques de Paris, FRAC Cham­pagne-Ardennes, Collec­tion Province de Hain­aut/Grand-Hornu, Trien­nale Design Museum de Milan
Watch­mak­ing patri­mo­nial collec­tions: Patrimoine Vacheron Constantin, Geneva; Manu­fac­ture Cartier, la Chaux-de-fonds; Collec­tion Cartier, Geneva; Collec­tion Privée Piaget, Geneva; Patrimoine Aude­mars Piguet, Le Brassus; Patrimoine Jaeger Lecoultre, Le Sentier; Compag­nie des Montres Long­ines Fran­cil­lon SA, Saint-Imier; IWC Museum, Schaf­fouse; Musée Girard-Perregaux, La Chaux-de-Fonds
Watch­mak­ing brands: Bell & Ross, Hermès, Hublot, MB&F, Meta Watch, Dallas & Espoo, Offi­cine Panerai, Parmi­gi­ani Fleur­ier, Pierre Junod, Benoît Mintiens for Ressence, John Armleder for RJ-Romain Jerome, Félix Baumgart­ner & Martin Frei for URWERK, Samsung Elec­tron­ics, Sony, Hannes Wett­stein for Ventura, Kari Voutil­ainen
Artists and design­ers: Joëlle Aeschli­mann & Math­ieu Rivier & Pauline Saglio/ECAL, Darren Almond, Fran­cis Alÿs, Iván Argote, Thorunn Arnadot­tir, François Azam­bourg, Maarten Baas, Bina Baitel, Lenora de Barros, Yves Béhar/Fusepro­ject for Issey Miyake, Benoît Billotte, Klaus Botta, breade­dE­scalope, Natalia Brilli, Dongjin Byeon, Valentin Carron, Pierre Char­rié, Martino d’Es­posito & Alex­an­dre Gail­lard/Swiss Koo, Jean-François d’Or, Ruth Ewan, Mark Form­anek, Adrienne Garbini, Wendy Gaze & Arnaud Imober­steg/HEAD-Genève, Constance Guis­set, Martí Guixé, Humans Since 1982, Crispin Jones, Solkin Keizer/ HEAD-Genève, Fiona Krüger/ECAL, Shiro Kuramata, Alicja Kwade, Seraina Lareida/ECAL, Math­ieu Lehan­neur, Nicolas Le Moigne, Jorge Macchi, Alex­an­dra Martini, Eric Morzier/SIGMASIX, Gianni Motti, Math­ilde Petit & Roland Kawczyn­ski-Pill­onel/HEAD-Genève, Jordi Pla/ECAL, Bertrand Planes, Poetic Lab, Chris­ti­aan Postma, Qubus Design Studio, Raqs Media Collect­ive, Pauline Saglio/ECAL, Michael Sans, Nazar Siga­her/Meyer Group, Philip Starck pour Fossil, Maxim Velcov­sky, Dominic Wilcox, Siren Elise Wilhelmsen, Jeremy & Adrian Wright for Lexon, Sebastian Wrong, Tokujin Yosh­ioka for Seiko, Tristan Zimmer­mann
Galler­ies and design edit­ors: Carpenters Work­shop Gallery, Estab­lished&Sons, Frith Street Gallery, Peter Kilch­mann, kamel mennour, Galeria Millan, Galerie Perrotin, Galerie Xippas
Private collec­tions: Aaron R., Arnaud Tellier, A l’Em­eraude