Bettina Pousttchi: Aurora Museum Shanghai

During the Shanghai Art Season, Aurora Museum Shanghai has invited the renowned German artist Bettina Pousttchi to present her World Time Clock series.

The monumental work World Time Clock consists of 24 photographs, each depicting a public clock showing the time of 1:55pm in a different city. Bettina Pousttchi began this series in 2008, traveling the globe to photograph public clocks in cities around the world. The act of visiting various places forms a fundamental part of the conceptual artwork. To realize this endeavor, the artist visited numerous cities worldwide, including Anchorage, Auckland, Sydney, Shanghai, Vladivostok, Seoul, Rio de Janeiro, Tashkent, New Delhi, and Yangon, among others. Beyond a few individual trips, the artist circumnavigated the globe twice in one journey, visiting eight different places within 27 days

These photographs collectively create a “Photographic World Time Clock,” hinting at global simultaneity and imagined synchronicity, disregarding time zones. The World Time Clock underscores the global networks that span our world, propelled by increased mobility and digital communication. The series highlights the unique role of photography in creating time capsules, capturing the evolving perception of time in the digital age.

The black and white appearance of the photographs harmonizes perfectly with the unique architectural language of Tadao Ando. World Time Clock was first shown as a full circle installation at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, in 2016–17. The series was shown a second time at the Berlinische Galerie, Museum of Modern Art, Berlin in 2019–20. The World Time Clock exhibition at the Shanghai Aurora Museum is the first presentation of this widely recognized work in both China and across Asia.

Curator: Xiaoming Zhang.