COVID-19
One of the stranger casualties of the coronavirus pandemic has been time. What is day, when is lunch, why is tomorrow without live showtimes, punch clocks and dinner parties? Leviticus Shand muses on what has been (and continues to be) our shared reality in A Year if a Day, exhibited at Lillstreet Art Center this past fall. Playing in loops on the sorts of small screen-based devices that have become indispensable are a series of GIFS created during Chicago’s shelter-in-place order. They are essentially the artist equivalent of watching the clock tick: Shand tracked the passage of light through venetian blinds, on the leaves of a pothos plant, on his kitchen walls and floor, across a gridded cutting mat. Done with a stop-motion technique that speeds things up considerably, the effect is aesthetically pleasing, of geometrically sharp shadows moving quickly and transformatively over domestic objects. The project itself achieves the old two-birds-with-one-stone ideal: Shand found a way to pass the time while also thoughtfully marking it.
—Lori Waxman 2021-01-13 10:00 AM