3A Gallery
Johanna Robinson’s works in Noon is a Fiction allude to the transcendental nature of time. Drawing on early timekeeping devices — such as the candle clock, the sundial, and the solar transit instrument that established the Greenwich Meridian as a global reference — the work questions whether these varied mechanisms serve the same function, both practically and ontologically.
The paintings suggest an uneasiness with timekeeping as a technology. In Light-Emitting Diode, a pack of wolves join a domesticated dog in howling at a floor lamp rather than the moon. Elsewhere, in Distance, Euclidean Norm, temporal and spatial boundaries destabilize as a wolf morphs through a trans-dimensional doorway. Additional works reference technologies of both the future and the past, ranging from solar mirrors to the Lycurgus Cup, drawing parallels between the development of nanotechnology over the past 1,600 years.
Materially, the works reinforce the dissonance between embodiment and technological systems: through the incorporation of materials like sawdust and glass beads, their textured surfaces resist a digital read. This emphasis on the handmade suggests an ephemeral quality, with certain areas deliberately sanded away to reveal the painterly process.
Together with references to infinity, the ouroboros, and the phrase “Tempus edax rerum” (“Time, devourer of all things”), these works frame time as a construct and an existential force, shaped by an enduring effort to grasp the hidden knowledge beneath the procession of the sun.