It is not known who made the first clock nor when. The same can be said for works of art. What is the relationship between clocks and art? Both are signposts of temporal distance. The title, “Platonia” references a contraversial theoretical physist, Julian Barbour whose ruminations on the nature of time are influencial to the concept of the exhibition. He has concluded that time itself does not exist as anything other than an illusion. He calls his universe without time and only relative positions ‘Platonia’ after Plato’s world of eternal forms.

Each individual moves at a different pace. Sometimes a pace differs a fraction of a second other times by hours. Pacing has to do with ones relationship to the clock. Why are some people early and others late, those who linger and those who leave. Slow speakers, fast speakers, eating speeds and attention spans are evidence that our internal clocks are not ticking in unison. To find your pace or speed is an important part of knowing yourself. People move to the city, others go to the country some do both. People set their watches ahead while others set them behind. There is no right or wrong way to calibrate the internal, instinctual pace to that of the collective outside world.

Twelve young artists sense their relationship with time by making a personal “clock”. Not quite a functioning clock, but an invitation to evaluate their pace. Starring works by Steve Cannon, Georgia Elrod, Joseph Ferriso, Jason Grabowski, Andreas Gurewich, Beth Livensperger, Sven Loven, John Oswald, Douglas Peltzman, Michael Raphael, Charles Shedden, Eric Trosko and Jason Wurm. Tribes gallery will be a land of nows, all different and self contained. Each “clock” expressing a different now, functioning at a different speed.

A Gathering of the Tribes is an arts and cultural organization dedicated to excellence in the arts from a diverse perspective. Located on the Lower East Side of New York City, Tribes has been in existence since 1991. In that year, Steve Cannon, poet, playwright, novelist, and retired professor from the City University of New York, converted a portion of his apartment into an informal salon. Despite his loss of eyesight to glaucoma, he encouraged the exchange of alternative points of view traditionally overlooked by mainstream media. Tribes was conceived as a venue for underexposed artists, as well as a networking center and locus for the development of new talent.