TIME FLIES: Jim Campbell, Julie W Chang, Anoka Faruqee, Andrea Higgins, Stefan Kürten, Michael Light, Crystal Liu, Marco Maggi, John O'Reilly, Liliana Porter, Gideon Rubin, John Andrews, Nelleke Beltjens, Jonathan Brand, Anthony Discenza, Alfredo Jar

Celebrating the artists and exhibitions of the past 12 years at our San Francisco location, Time Flies explores permutations of the experience of time, including memory and nostalgia; disruptions and inconsistencies in our perception of time; alternate means of measuring and recording time; and time as an integral component to the finished work, whether it be video-based, sequential, narrative, or an intensely time-consuming process. Artists include: John Andrews, Nelleke Beltjens, Jonathan Brand, Jim Campbell, Julie Chang, Anthony Discenza, Anoka Faruqee, Andrea Higgins, Alfredo Jaar, Baseera Khan, Byron Kim, Stefan Kurten, Michael Light, Crystal Liu, Marco Maggi, John O’Reilly, Liliana Porter, Gideon Rubin, and Shahzia Sikander.

The notion that time is an even, progressive flow contradicts not only our occasional experience of reality, but also recent research into time perception. We’ve all experienced deja vu or the sense that time speeds up as we grow older. Just like vision, time perception is a construction of the mind. Different types of sensory information (hearing, seeing, touch, etc) are processed at different speeds by different neural architectures within the brain. It may be that the brain must wait for the slowest information to arrive to construct the most accurate ‘story’ of what’s happening in the outside world. Once all the information has been gathered and processed, it sends us the interpretation as though it were a smooth and seamless experience of the present. But, if this is true, then awareness is actually ‘postdictive’ – incorporating data from a window of time after an event and delivering a retrospective interpretation of what happened. In other words, what we perceive as the present is really the past, and what we perceive as an undisrupted flow is actually disjointed information that has been reassembled by our brains.

Time Flies represents the penultimate exhibition at our 430 Clementina Street location. In light of these new insights into the complexities of our experience of time, and in anticipation of our future transition, Time Flies presents an opportunity to reflect on the past 12 years in grateful recognition of all of the artists who have activated our unique space with exceptional and memorable artworks and installations. We will close our doors at the end of October and reopen in a new San Francisco location in early 2012.