![\"Magnus](\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Halfpast_Noah_2023_OilOnPrimedLinen_60x48cm.jpg\")
By commissioning the making of clockworks to assistants, Magnus Frederik acts as a storyteller, drafting the scripts of a narrative. Drawing upon narratology, we can say that the \u201cstory\u201d corresponds to the script the artist drafts and hands to his assistants, the \u201ctale\u201d aligns with the assistants\u2019 performance, and the exhibition becomes the \u201cnarration\u201d, resulting from the interplay of the two as a medium in itself. Starting a quest into the artworks\u2019 authorship and making, the clock series was born out of these concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
5.05, 7.00, 11.00 (The shabby faces of some wall clocks remind me of the infinite days at school spent staring at the clock), 10.35, 8.00 (is it morning or afternoon?). These combinations bear no trace of recurrences, anniversaries, or significance\u2014just like any other moment on the timeline of our lives. Or, if they did, they forgot about it, or we forgot about it. The works gain a meaning and a reality merely by being, or, better, by being \u201cnarrated\u201d after the artist\u2019s direction. Occurring in a chain of relations, instead of a closed-circuit narrative, the procedure reveals a quest on the mechanisms that regulate the work\u2019s making. The act of the artist comes about as a demand for a narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Different colors and, you can tell, hands and styles differentiate these paintings. Is it a countdown, a procession of memorable moments, or the forgotten record of every time we\u2019ve asked, \u201cwhat time is it?\u201d, in the course of an ordinary day?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is art? Why art? It seems to be asking the artist. I believe Magnus Frederik Clausen\u2019s exploration of how art functions may represent one of many approaches to answering such open-ended questions. In doing so, Clausen unveils these paintings\u2019 hidden relational economies, power structures, and labor (1). The structure of a new work is accomplished in the act of narrating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In delving into Magnus Frederik Clausen\u2019s practice, I was reminded of one of the most important postmodern Italian works of the 20th<\/sup> century. In 1972 the Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote a short novel titled The Invisible Cities,<\/em> depicting the fictional dialogues between the venetian traveller Marco Polo and the emperor of the Mongol empire, Kublai Khan. In the obsessive request addressed at Marco Polo by the Khan to narrate his reign through the account of Polo\u2019s travels, the novel is a crafted oeuvre that conjures up an intricate building that reflects the layers and burrows of narrating. I believe that the Khan\u2019s impossible desire to possess his empire, resonates with Clausen\u2019s need to exhaust the alchemies, delegations, and proxies that stand behind arts\u2019 making (2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The work, just like Polo\u2019s mission, is fulfilled only in the impossible pursuit of a definitive account, or perhaps in the liminal space between the real and fictional retelling of his journeys through the empire. And yet another moment on the clock has passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notes: <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Magnus](\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/2.jpg\")
![\"Magnus](\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Nittennulet_Noah_2023_OilOnCanvas_24x18cm.jpg\")
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