Children's Clock

Maarten Baas's Children's Clock is a seminal work from his celebrated Real Time series, in which time is recorded through filmed performance rather than traditional mechanical movement. For this piece, Baas collaborated with 720 children, each contributing a unique drawing of clock hands at a specific minute, resulting in 720 drawings edited together to function as a fully operational 12 hour timepiece. The sculptural casing is handmade from stainless steel and clay with a silk gloss finish, giving the work a pillow like, organic form that frames a circular display screen. The clock face presents a child's hand drawing and erasing the clock hands in real time, offering a poetic and subtly surreal meditation on time, creativity, and memory.