DAVID CLAERBOUT

“The Flow of Time” is an unproven concept originating in astrophysics, developed by Russian astronomer Kozyrev, who understood time as a flowing field of energy that carries and transmits information. As the title of the exhibition, it refers to the essence of the video medium itself: video creates periods of time in which images flow continuously and generate meaning.
The works of David Claerbout and Zhou Tao allow us to experience how the passage of time shapes the work and influences the viewer's consciousness. David Claerbout's “The Woodcarver and the Forest” (2025) is a twenty-hour video work that does not narrate time, but makes it tangible. Claerbout understands film as a work of duration that only reveals itself when viewed at length. The motif of wood carving, often associated with mindfulness and deceleration, creates an apparent relaxation through calm movements and ASMR-like sounds. This calm is deceptive. As an endlessly repeatable, processual sequence, the work only reveals its ambivalence over time: the contemplative beauty of the forest conceals a creeping loss, tree by tree, irrevocably. The critical power of the work lies in this tension between perception and insight—time becomes a means of revealing an irreversible change.
Formally, Claerbout and Zhou work differently: Claerbout combines virtual images with historical and real material, while Zhou relies on extensive location shots and speculation.

10 November 2025 – 10 February 2026