Usually the person who asks “Who has the time?” already has their answer. OBJECTIVE GALLERY returns to Paris, a city only sometimes polite to time, presenting the work of eight individuals whose ideas, methods and skill refuse the clock, at THEMA, a fair most observant of time and moving forward. 

Eye to eye with the present, ‘Who Has The Time? / Qui a Le Temps ?’ exhibits functional art that double as counterarguments, enquiries sent to current models: production, trend, attention, time. A world on ten-speed.
It’s no honeymoon, the labor of love; both carrot and stick. Labor of love. Who has the time?

DREW ABRAHAMSON, PIERRE CASTIGNOLA, BELTRAN DE MONTAUZON, HELENE DE SAINT LAGER, WILLIAM GUILLON, EMILIE LEMARDELEY, LUKE MALANEY and TOR ROTHSCHILD NERIA found the time, made the work — with pleasure, pressure, assistance; energetically, inefficiently, pedantically. 

Slow practices are an endangered species, quarry to rationality, convenience. Declared outdated brought to an end in the name of efficiency. All with the promise of more time.

“When you make bread,” Gaetano Pesce said, “The first thing you do is take a piece and taste. Art, expression, it’s the same thing. We need expression to help us better our lives”. An object is something that makes life more enjoyable. For the presenting artists, same goes for the process. That unwieldy creative act with no promise of reward. 

If being a surgeon is “playing God,” we asked Helene De Saint Lager, being an artist or designer is playing what? “Time. Trying to choreograph stillness within movement.” It’s not playing God, Luke Malaney said, it’s playing poker. The object or design you most wish you invented: the sundial, Tor Rothschild Neria responded. “It makes the invisible passage of time visible. Bridging nature, design, and human experience in the most elemental way.” In flux; rolling with it; life’s raw materials – each artists relationship to time resides in their work. 

One could argue time is the greatest artist of them all, making things grow richer, clearer, stronger, delightfully complex. For Drew Abrahamson, Pierre Castignola, Beltran De Montauzon, Helene De Saint Lager, William Guillon, Emilie Lemardeley, Luke Malaney and Tor Rothschild Neria: time is exiled, a collaborator, friend. Who has the time? Everyone. These are just eight different ways to hold it.