Ken Lum: Time. And Again.

Royale Projects is pleased to announce Time. And Again. an exhibition of new works by Ken Lum opening Saturday, Jan 28, 2023 and running through April 1, 2023.

Time. And Again. employs Lum’s acclaimed image-text format to explore issues around our contemporary existence and how it is defined by the anxiety and stress around work and labor using the pandemic as a starting point. The people portrayed in these new works are representative of what he recognizes as “persons who are inheritors of the contradictory and too often pernicious effects of modernity. The contemporaneity they find themselves in is often oppressive and the characters have to struggle against it, often feebly.”

The title of the series evokes the essence of time as not linear but circular and repetitive. In our lives, we encounter the same concerns over and over often spending an excessive amount of time working and worrying (about work), reworking, and rethinking. This notion is stylistically present through the short, slogan-like written text juxtaposing the photographic portraits. 

“Time. And Again., 2021, a set of Lum’s repeated-text billboards, updated to address the anxieties exacerbated by our elongated pandemic and our cyclical “death while living.” The format’s tensions oscillate between what is seen and what is said, enacting our subjective interpretations to fill narrative gaps.” -Joni Low, Artforum

This body of work was first shown in an exhibition in the public space of Antwerp, Belgium at the Middelheim Museum in the form of large-scale billboards. In February 2022, Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada opened a career-spanning exhibition of Lum’s work titled Death and Furniture which displayed Time. And Again. alongside an impactful selection of works from his internationally celebrated, 40-year practice curated by Michelle Jacques and Johan Lundh. Death and Furniture traveled to Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada in June, 2022 where it was curated by Xiaoyu Weng, Carol and Morton Rapp Curator of the Gallery's Modern and Contemporary Art department.