CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: "The Clock," Sept. 27 to Jan. 5, 2013, Winnipeg Art Gallery

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Courtesy White Cube, London, and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

"The Clock"

Christian Marclay, "The Clock," 2010, single channel video, duration 24 hours. Purchased 2011 with the generous support of Jay Smith and Laura Rapp, and Carol and Morton Rapp, Toronto Jointly owned by the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. © the artist.

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2 of 4

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Courtesy White Cube, London, and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

"The Clock"

Christian Marclay, "The Clock," 2010, single channel video, duration 24 hours. Purchased 2011 with the generous support of Jay Smith and Laura Rapp, and Carol and Morton Rapp, Toronto Jointly owned by the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. © the artist.

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3 of 4

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Courtesy White Cube, London, and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

"The Clock"

Christian Marclay, "The Clock," 2010, single channel video, duration 24 hours. Purchased 2011 with the generous support of Jay Smith and Laura Rapp, and Carol and Morton Rapp, Toronto Jointly owned by the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. © the artist.

×

4 of 4

Expand

Courtesy White Cube, London, and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

"The Clock"

Christian Marclay, "The Clock," 2010, single channel video, duration 24 hours. Purchased 2011 with the generous support of Jay Smith and Laura Rapp, and Carol and Morton Rapp, Toronto Jointly owned by the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston © the artist.

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CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: The Clock

Sept. 27 to Jan. 5, 2013

Winnipeg Art Gallery

By Murray Whyte

There is absolutely nothing particularly profound about The Clock, Christian Marclay’s 24-hour-long obsessive cobbling-together of film history that performs the maddeningly precise task of actually telling time, minute by minute, in real time, right in front of your eyes – except, of course, everything.

The Clock was the standout hit of London’s Frieze art fair in 2010, and then the Venice Biennale the year following. By then, all its editions had long since sold, with the National Gallery of Canada plucking a half-share of one at the 11th hour, which it shares with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. For Marclay, the 50ish Swiss-American artist who has long dabbled with offbeat video and sound mashups, its runaway popularity has already made it his legacy piece.

One of its main draws – and the one, I imagine, that has moved people to wait in line for hours to see it – is its enervatingly dense collage of filmic moments from an overwhelming swath of global film history. You can get dizzy playing spot-the-flick: Here, an incensed (and likely hungover) Billy Bob Thornton, violently assaulting a clock radio in a clip from what must be Bad Santa (Marclay offers no such cataloguing); there, Charlie Chaplin watching his work day tick away in what I believe to be Modern Times, or Humphrey Bogart stepping out of a taxi in The Maltese Falcon.

Kelly McGillis, Tom Hanks, Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, Jimmy Stewart – a cascade of scenes, stars, has-beens and unidentifiables spill out of The Clock’s voluminous churn – a necessity, as Marclay exhaustively traveled both the main throughways and dusty back roads of cinematic history to represent every minute of a 24-hour day on film.

Some things are predictable – London’s Big Ben is likely The Clock’s star, if such a thing can be said, variously gazed at from afar, clung to and dangled from close up; at one point, its ticking face masks the planting of a bomb. Others are utterly opaque; around 11 a.m., a hazy, amateurish shot of a long, white table around which about a dozen Asian men with shaggy hair sit. Its obvious attraction for Marclay, a massive clock towering over the table, gains it prominent billing: it appears several times over the hour as the clock ticks one minute to the next.

But what elevates The Clock, part of the National Gallery’s touring program, from dorky film-nerd fascination to art is something more subtle and imposing. The central conceit of a film narrative is its ability to untether itself from time; we leap eras and continents in a heartbeat, unstuck from the everyday that governs real life.

The Clock lures you with the promise of that cinematic experience – Marclay is expert at weaving together disparate clips to provocatively suggest narrative, a continuum where there logically can’t be one – yet it relentlessly taps you on the shoulder, reminding you of time’s inexorable slide. The piece is equal parts confection and aggravation: it’s a trap, pinning you in place, making you hyper-aware of what the experience of watching moving images on a screen ultimately allows you to forget. It’s one you’ll willingly enter, though. And don’t worry if you have somewhere to be: The Clock, being a clock, will keep you right on time.