In May 10th, I went to William
Kentridge’s installation, "The Refusal of Time", which is located in 399, first
floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In this installation, Kentridge divided
this room into three parts, the videos, including five screens, the auditions,
including several horns, and the real objects, which are several chairs, and a
large machine. On the five screens, some videos and animations were played, and
the videos seem to be played with different timeline, which express a sense of
four dimension. Then, on the different horns, different sounds were played,
also shows an influence of time on the sounds. Lastly, the machine, which looks
like metronome, is essential in the whole exhibition. The beats of metronome
seemed to be varied, and showed the theme, "The Refusal of Time".
Some of the videos are extremely impressive
to me. The first one is the scene that many people are moving around the wall,
holding some old-fashioned stuff. They walked from one wall to another,
breaking the limitation of the space and that of time. Besides, the other
scenes also impressed me a lot. Since Kentridge is an artist from South Africa,
his videos really showed the lives of South Africa people in a different way.
In the show, Kentridge portrayed a number of different scenes about the lives
of people. For example, he once portrayed a woman hiding her mistress under the
cover of a tablecloth, but when the husband of this woman picked up the
tablecloth, the mistress turned into a frog. It might reflect people’s lives in
some way, but more in an expression of art.
