It is always today, always now. Yesterday has passed, tomorrow remains speculative. Human beings, trapped in the fleeting present, are swept along by time – relentlessly, irreversibly. Karo Kuchar resists this linearity. Her latest installation introduces a temporal shift – a poetic incision into what appears to be an immutable continuum. Based in Vienna and born in 1986, Kuchar has exhibited her multidisciplinary work in Paris, Berlin, and New York. For the exhibition Time is not a line, she transforms the desire to escape the now into a walk-in allegory. “I wish I had a time machine,” she notes – and promptly builds one. A symbolic elevator, flanked by hourglasses. Behind mirrored surfaces, the self begins to blur. What appears to be a functional object with sliding doors reveals itself as a space of thought – a dispositif for imagining alternative temporalities. The time machine becomes a stage for possibility: you enter to disappear. Or to encounter yourself anew. Only the shoes remain – black loafers, glazed stoneware. Classic, gender-neutral, ready for takeoff. Yet their weight keeps them grounded. Nearby, “Time flies / Raven Love” also speaks of the desire to move – and its constraint. Mercury’s shoes, suspended in a cloudlike cage, bear wings made from architectural skins: textile transfers of abraded walls. Since 2016, Kuchar has worked with these “skins” of architecture, transforming them into a shell of memory. Layered. And anything but smooth. A solitary pendulum clock stands sentinel at the booth’s threshold while diverse fragments of her wall-stripped skins are dancing through space, caged by stretcher frames. A drifting textile cloud gives away the catchphrase “funny times”. Margaret Atwood once wrote: “Time is not a line but a dimension.” Kuchar takes her at her word – cutting through the axes of 24/7 with fabric, ceramic, and reflection. The art historical discourse on time is rich: from ancient memento mori to 1970s body-time experiments and the speculative virtuality of digital media. Kuchar aligns not retrospectively, but reflexively. Her references are porous: H.G. Wells, Back to the Future, Bill & Ted, feminist temporal critique. As she suggests, women live under pressure – framed by imposed temporalities. However, the crises of the present make escapism newly seductive for not just women, but rather everybody. In a world that mistakes speed for meaning, Kuchar constructs – against the current of time – a moment held in space.
Text: Paula Watzl
