Counting (for) eight hours- by the artist Ignacio Uriarte at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
Text: Maria Nitulescu, editor in Berlin
Photography: Stefanie Schmid Rincon
Already at its 10th edition, the Gallery Weekend plays an important role in the cultural and artistic life scene of Berlin.
There is definitely so much to see … Openings of amazing gallery shows, events and performances. The galleries will present the shows for a couple of weeks more and if you didn’t have time this weekend you will still have the opportunity not to miss important shows as the one of Berlinische Galerie for instance.
From 4th of May 2014 the foyer of the Berlinische Galerie-Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture, will hum to a new acoustic installation-„Counting (for) eight hours”-by the artist Ignacio Uriarte, whose artworks focus is often on time and work (office) environment matters.
In this installation he presents a matter of time, a repetitive male voice can be heard as he steadily counts away eight hours. The units of time are syllables, each one lasting a second, and the German speaker reaches the figure 3579 in the course of eight hours.
Uriarte’s installation is not just a reference to the span of time reported in a typical working day or the museum’s own daily opening hours, it also reflects the relation between time as an abstract category and language as a way of structuring and defining it.
German artist Ignacio Uriarte, born in Krefeld in 1972, he lives and works in Berlin.
In spite of the fact he started a career in Business Administration , in 1999 he starts to study Audio-Visual Art at the Centro de Artes Audiovisuales in Guadalajara, Mexico and quit his last serious administrative job in November 2003, dedicating himself as a full-time artist.
Uriarte is an international artist with solo shows at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Galleria Gentili, Prato, Italy, The Drawing Center, New York, and many others, as well permanent collections as FRAC Lorraine, France, JUMEX, Mexico, or MUSAC, León, Spain.
