We cordially invite you to Jerome Kugans exhibition Time is a Donut opening December 12 at 7 p.m.

Time is a Donut is the title of Jerome Kugan's exhibition in the basis project space, which presents works from his residency in Frankfurt. On display are three series of works that deal with the personal experience of time and its intertwining with memories.

The way in which people experience time and the technical and social conditions that shape these experiences are a recurring theme in art.  William Kentridge, for example, in his installation The Refusal of Time works against the often violently enforced notion of an ever-advancing, synchronised time, as propagated in colonial and industrialised contexts. Quite differently, artists On Kawara marks the fleeting, individual moment in a seemingly infinitely extended, abstract time in his works. 

Jerome Kugan's works propose a very different conception of time, Time is a Donut, emphasises the cyclical recurrence of moments and personal memories, and places the physical, raw and unfinished experience of it at the centre. Time here does not progress independently of people and bodies, but is eaten (like a donut), digested, excreted and reintroduced into the cycle. 

His work The Secret Life of Poetry, or There is a donut for every moment, a moment for every donut consists of scroll-like collages and handwritten drafts for poems, punctuated by food packaging, ticket stubs and more, records the evolution of the artist’s changing interpretations of his poems during his time in Frankfurt. The open form of the work suggests an ongoing, constantly reshaping process.

The two other series in the exhibition also utilise a simple, fleeting formal language composed of many moments. This creates an open, porous impression; the works do not appear to be closed to the passage of time but, like people themselves, are exposed to decay, change and chance. In Reveal, or Travelling through the temporal anuses I see everything that makes and remakes every other thing, the artist uses a single, repeated motif pattern to evoke a mask-like form of eyes, mouths or, in his words, temporal anuses, by means of graphite on old record sleeves. Thus, (body-)openings are depicted, through which in the narrative of the exhibition time and memories penetrate and flow out again. 

In an empathetic way, Jerome Kugans  Time is a donut locates the passing of time in our bodies and develops an idea of the human experience of time that runs counter to any linear, progress-orientated and abstract, impersonal concept of time.  

Opening hours:

Fri, 13.12.: 4 - 7 p.m.

Sat., 14.12.: 4 - 7 p.m.

Sun, 15.12.: 4 - 7 p.m