To start off the Villa du Parc’s Swiss season, À heures fixes, pas une minute à perdre (At Set Times, Not a Minute to Lose) plays the identity card, so to speak, the Swiss sense of identity that is, taking for a model one of the jewels of the Confederation, Swiss watchmaking, the inspiration for an exhibition at several different speeds.

The group show, the above-named hours, is set, bringing together Raphaël Julliard, Pascal Schwaighofer and Marie Velardi, three Swiss artists whose very different approaches run across, each in its way, the course of time. Their works play with deliberate, elastic time differences. There are appropriations of models for measuring and displaying time, revival of old techniques in art, objects that are consciously difficult to place in time, projections into the past or future, installation of independent production systems, etc.

The individual shows, the above-named minutes, are variable, on the other hand, changing every three weeks and allowing each of the three artists in addition to develop a production project and exhibit the results one after the other.

The works in the group show look like a discontinuous collection of eclectic fragments, in the spirit of old-time cabinets of curiosities and running counter to a historicist vision of art.

The individual shows will feature projects that will take shape during the run of the exhibition, highlighting the production process and its connection with time. A screening room, moreover, will be reserved for the artist during his or her solo show, allowing visitors to deepen their understanding of each artist’s approach by comparing works of art in the process of becoming with those that are already completed.