Time after is an annual open submission exhibition hosted by Gallery Kortil in Rijeka and MKC in Split. The exhibition aims to provide an important international platform for contemporary visual art with an emphasis on supporting new and emerging talents from Croatia and UK.

Curator: Sabina Salamon       Concept of the show: Emanuela Santini

Gallery Kortil                               MKC, Split

11 May – 31 May 2011               25 August - 4 September 2011

But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time?  

Aurelius Augustine, Confessions, Book XI 

There are many who claim that the question as to what is time is one of the hardest. It is comforting, however, that the notion of time does not have to be understood in order to sense time. Therefore, science and philosophy debate about time, while we live satisfied with naive-objectivist conceptions, contrary to the truth, and close to our need for time: lost time, hard time, optimistic time, stolen time….

In accord with our interest for the time that oscillates within a range of before and after, appearing as continuance, arising and maturation, becoming, by the way, experience of our existence (Bergson), the contest rules for the exhibition Time After consider the period of five years from graduation, as well as the art production within past two years, from 2008 until today. The accent on the period following graduation, Masters or doctoral degree, is a consequence of a presumption that this period can unfold in many different ways, in self-sufficient idling, in inhibition and fear of public critic, in a burst of creativity or omnipresence.

Since the algorithm of change is inscribed in time, logically there has to exist a precondition for change, an alteration of opposites, a reversal from a state of motion into a state of stillness. Aristotle spoke his mind on this matter by claiming that the time is a measure of stillness as much as it is a measure of motion. Much later on, Aurelius Augustine interpreted time as the subjective and transcendental category that exists within soul, thanks to memory, a peculiar database where, by plunking incessantly, we place event within temporary relations. Throughout the whole history of time research there persisted the above mentioned opposing viewpoints. One holds that time is the reality of soul, of the subject in a process of self-observation. The other, opposing, deems that time exist as an absolute notion, mathematic time, evenly flowing regardless of any external phenomena (Newton). Later on, Einstein too will classify time as objective, though not absolute, but relative phenomenon, the fourth spatial dimension.

Still, most of the scholars have come to incline to the metaphysical comprehension of time, considering it as the determinant of man's psychic and perceptual nature. This gives us impetus to think about time in an entirely personal sense. Finally, Hegel too has postulated such an utterly speculative definition of time, by claiming that time is a characteristic of being in general, revealed to us as something external.  Yet perhaps most poetic and most human lines on time come from Augustine, who asked whether time measurements are illusion, since what is to measure if times past now are no longer, and times future are not yet.  We have no other option but to agree, that the sense of time is pertaining to a personal inner vision of the world. The space, time’s counterpart, we use to see the external world (Kant).

In many cases, visual art gives a hint of overlapping between space and time, touching our inner sense of transience or continuance through the external, visible world. Parameters such as perception, barely visible change, whether in tempo, whether in the dynamics of image or sound, wake up our inner counter and enable the observer to respond to the known sense of time-lapse, that according to Aristotle is inscribed in our memory. The perception of time is especially impinged upon by the works that represent movement or are movable themselves (video, film). This exhibition contains several such works. However, we shall not go into them for the reason that the exhibition’s motif  lays somewhere else entirely. The author of the exhibition’s concept, Emanuela Santini, does not posit time as either a visual problem or task. Rather, her impulse lays with providing artists with motive for communication during the crucial period, after they leave the educational institutions. If  time is a form of self-observation and self-reflection on a journey to the self-consciousness (Kant) and if art is the only authentic relation to oneself (Heidegger) than twenty six (26) authors coming from various educational formats and cultural milieus are a sufficient sample to answer the question: What  are we going to do with the time after?

Sabina Salamon

April 2011