The exhibition Temporal Matter invites the audience on a journey through different scales of time - from mechanical impulse to digital simulation, from minerals formed deep within ancient mountains to cosmic orbits and back to the human experience of the present moment. This exhibition emerged in dialogue with the watchmaking gallery Art In Time, who presents in Gstaad rare watches from among the most innovative and outstanding in the world of Fine Watchmaking.
Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, founder of Art in Time, comments: “Each creation is a testament to creativity, audacity, and uncompromising craftsmanship. Bringing this philosophy to Gstaad, in partnership with Studio Naegeli, allows us to share these exceptional works in a setting that embodies elegance and exclusivity.”
For Anna Högl, a curator of the exhibition and co-owner of Studio Naegeli, time has long been a subject of research. Approaching it from an anthropological perspective, she examined how cultural, social, and bodily practices shape the ways humans experience and inhabit temporal reality.
This time the artistic journey begins with sketches by Jean Tinguely (1925-1992), where mechanics appear as living systems. His machines exist not for results, but for action, where time is understood as continuous motion, embodying his principle: “The only stable thing is movement.”. Next, small-scale paintings by Fanny Brennan (1921–2001), presented in dialogue with actual watch mechanisms, shift attention to the micro-level. Their intimate format and surreal precision encourage the viewer to slow down and observe every detail, emphasizing craftsmanship and the delicate structures through which time is measured. This focus on subtle rhythms continues in the conceptual textual piece by the minimalist artist Carl Andre (1935–2024), where pauses between words become temporal intervals, attempting to replay fragments of memory.
From these intimate explorations of time and memory, the exhibition expands outward to the cosmic scale in the drawings and illustrations by Mikhail Romadin (1940–2012), the art director of Andrey Tarkovsky’s Solaris. His works reflect a romantic attempt to construct systems capable of measuring processes far beyond human control. Through these illustrations and imagination, viewers are invited to contemplate the profound, incomprehensible scale of the universe, bridging the intimate and the infinite. This perspective extends through a large-scale photograph from Thomas Ruff’s Stars series, based on astronomical archives. The image captures light that began its journey long before human presence.
Archival photographs by Jacques Naegeli (1885-1971), shown within his former studio, bring the viewer back to geological markers of time. Mountains and glaciers - some of which have since disappeared - become indicators of fragility, and the significance of each preserved moment.
The exhibition continues with Philip Vermeulen’s light-based circular installations, built from slow, gentle shifts of light. His sculptures demand stillness and focused attention - it is exactly in this pause that time becomes most palpable. This approach resonates with Jonas Wyssen aka JW3 video installation. In it, a photographed gem dissolves into stardust and reverses vast geological time, compressing it into a fleeting moment. The work connects the stellar origins of matter with the immediacy of here and now.
The gallery space itself becomes part of the exhibition: a laboratory of time that existed before us and will continue beyond us. The exhibition is accompanied by the faint ticking of clocks, reminding us that every second experienced here and now is unique and truly precious.
