Info
Future Nows – Neue Nationalgalerie
Art/Exhibition Documentation
Client
Studio Markus Hoffmann
Year
2025
Subject
Exhibition/Work documentation for the artist Markus Hoffmann
The Work
Zirkon Kompass, 2025
Sixteen hourglasses filled with zircon hang from an aluminium framework attached to the ceiling. Arranged in a circle, they are oriented to the points of a sixteen-wind compass rose. Hung horizontally, they have lost their original function, yet the zircon sand still alludes to the transitory nature of time. The oldest known mineral on Earth enables us to look 4.4 billion years into the past. Almost every rock includes traces of zircon. The radioactive elements it contains, uranium and thorium, decay over billions of years into lead – a process that reveals the mineral’s age like an internal clock. With Zirkon Kompass, Markus Hoffmann thus transforms the hourglass from a symbol of vanitas into an abstract image of time, combining scientific measurement with poetic meaning.
Related projects
Near Life @ James Simon Galerie for Schroeder Rauch
MORIBA illumine @ Hamburger Bahnhof for Studio Markus Hoffmann
Art/Exhibition Documentation
Client
Studio Markus Hoffmann
Year
2025
Subject
Exhibition/Work documentation for the artist Markus Hoffmann
The Work
Zirkon Kompass, 2025
Sixteen hourglasses filled with zircon hang from an aluminium framework attached to the ceiling. Arranged in a circle, they are oriented to the points of a sixteen-wind compass rose. Hung horizontally, they have lost their original function, yet the zircon sand still alludes to the transitory nature of time. The oldest known mineral on Earth enables us to look 4.4 billion years into the past. Almost every rock includes traces of zircon. The radioactive elements it contains, uranium and thorium, decay over billions of years into lead – a process that reveals the mineral’s age like an internal clock. With Zirkon Kompass, Markus Hoffmann thus transforms the hourglass from a symbol of vanitas into an abstract image of time, combining scientific measurement with poetic meaning.
Related projects
Near Life @ James Simon Galerie for Schroeder Rauch
MORIBA illumine @ Hamburger Bahnhof for Studio Markus Hoffmann
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