The Pulse of Time

Claudia Schmacke's art addresses her interest in matters of temporality and perception. Currents 103: Claudia Schmacke, her exhibit at the Saint Louis Art Museum, uses an installation and two videos to present her ideas. Time Reel is a mass of plastic tubes filled with water and suspended from a wall. A series of hidden motors forces the green-tinted water through the tubes, hinting at a deconstructed vascular system marking time with idiosyncratic pulses. Hidden forces are similarly at work in her video Dark Matter, filmed at the La Brea Tar Pits, where geothermal energies animate the tar with the burbling imitation of self-powered motion, just as they have for millennia. Currents 103: Claudia Schmacke opens with a free public lecture by the artist at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 2, in the museum's auditorium; the exhibit remains on display in galleries 301 and 337 through Sunday, July 5. Admission is free, and the museum is open every day except Monday. For more information, call 314-721-0072 or visit www.slam.org.
Tuesdays-Sundays. Starts: April 2. Continues through July 5, 2009