"We could have been what we wanted to be", Ruth Ewan's decimal clock piece, currently on display in the Emilia auditorium of the Musuem of Modern Art in Warsaw, is one of the highlights in the Museum's collection. Referring to the fallen attempt of the French Revolution to redefine and rationalise the Gregorian calendar, Ewan's clock is not only an important reflection on the question of time as tool for political and social control but also a poetic metaphor of the utopian aspect of contemporaneity and timeless narratives in collecting.
Ewan has created a new evolving work, “A Revolutionary Advent Calendar”, which will be on display at the Museum's reception from December 1st until the final day of the current exhibition. Combining the western tradition of the advent calendar with poetic elements of the Republican Calendar, “A Revolutionary Advent Calendar” reveals and displays a new animal, vegetable or mineral each day.
From 1st of December, the day when children begin to celebrate the days in anticipation of Christmas and take turns in revealing a surprise through multiple windows of an advent calendar, Ruth Ewan institutes a radically different menology inside the Museum space. Throughout the weeks of “Frostarious” and “Snowarious” a mysterious object will arrive daily on a plinth near the reception area, mirroring the revolutionary atheist system that looks to nature for inspiration. The calendar will commence on the day of wax and continue the countdown until the exhibition's finissage. The „here-and-now" measured by Ruth Ewan's clock and calendar will manifests itself in the Museum as a contemplation of disorientation and celebration of the last weeks of the largest show to date in the Museum's history.
We invite you to the official set up of the calendar by Ruth Ewan followed by a Q&A with the artist on 1st December 2013 at 17.00