The two antique clock hands of the sculpture used to announce the universal order of human culture on the tower of a cathedral. The hands serving throughout the entire 20th century deteriorated over time and thus have recently been replaced by new ones. Now they reveal themselves in their reality as frail objects deprived of their fundamental role and function, bearing the physical effects of time.

 

In line with the artist’s intention, the anthropomorphic gesture generates sympathy in the viewer: the mechanical structures once functioning as external points of reference are now themselves compelled to take their place among people enveloped by time. The fate of structures believed to be objective entwines with our fate and they reflect our own transience as a mirror image.

 

The title Momentary Minds refers to Leibniz’s monadology in which each and every entity itself reflects the entire reality of the universe. In Leibniz’s opinion, similarly to objects, plants and animals are momentary minds, namely they have no perception of past and future, and therefore are unable to exist consciously – unlike the human being who is a true mind because humans are able to think rationally, while grasping and interpreting time as an abstract notion. In the process of its actions the true mind steadily exists and this steadfastness is appropriate for the harmony it has created.

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The work highlights the paradoxical nature of the interpretation of reality and attempts to refute Leibniz’s classical allocation of roles. Time awareness and consciousness of the finite and ephemeral nature of life are at the core of human existence and concurrently its greatest burden. In contrast to the internal timelessness of the vegetative, animal and material world, it is human beings existing in the pressure of time who are unable to grasp permanence in its own reality. In their case the present is slipping away, while consciousness, invincibly lagging behind, compulsively drifts towards the subsequent moment. The human mind vegetates on the boundar y of capacity and incapacity – as real momentar y minds being aware of their own insufficient abilities.