Ninar Esber: tangible time

(169 minutes, 2013 © Ninar Esber)

Brussels has yet another new art space. The new kid on the block, a non-profit operation, goes by the name of c-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e. The first to exhibit there is the Lebanese-French artist Ninar Esber (1971), who is showing “The Stabilizer Bar and The Time Stretchers”, a series of works that are not immediately easy to figure out, but that are actually about time. The French philosopher Henri Bergson made a distinction between objective and subjective time: a minute can seem like an eternity, whereas at other times it seems to race by. In Esber’s series, the abstract notion of time is translated into something tangible. The works in question are the result of a series of operations that (sometimes within a preconceived timeframe, sometimes not) produce objects whereby time can be measured. A large sheet of paper, for example, hangs on a wall. It has been carefully folded; its title is Unfolding and it is the result of 73 minutes of folding. Our favourite was a series entitled “Embossing”: four large sheets of paper, hung in the basement. They are pristinely white, but a number of points can be seen on them. The artist laid the sheets on a bed of nails and then lay down on them. For Embossing 20 Minutes, for example, she stuck it out for twenty minutes: her powers of endurance are thus linked to time. At the opening, two performances took place; afterwards, the number of minutes they took was totted up. In one, a woman rolled a number of clay balls; elsewhere, someone else kept on drawing red lines in a booklet. In a video series, we observe a number of people, with numbers on their heads, who are filmed from above as they engage in a wide variety of activities. The work, a free interpretation of a number of mathematical algorithms, adds up to a sort of choreography. At first sight, this exhibition may seem a bit obscure, but it is the kind of exhibition that is rewarding, once you are willing to make the effort.

NINAR ESBER: THE STABILIZER BAR AND THE TIME STRETCHERS > 18/1, do/je/Th > za/sa/Sa 14 > 18.00, gratis/gratuit/free, c-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e, Varkensmarkt 10 rue du Marché aux Porcs, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.c-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e.com