Canadian artist Tom Dean has created work in a variety of media since the late 1960s, including painting, sculpture, performance, video, installation and printmaking. Throughout his career Dean has experimented with appearance and perception, forcing his viewers to confront known objects in unexpected contexts. Tom Dean has built a strong international reputation and was Canada’s representative at the 48th Venice Biennale.
To make Eleven Consecutive Moments, Dean photographed an institutional clock from eleven slightly different points on a semi-circle. The images were enlarged and silk-screened onto canvas. The work humorously highlights the workplace tendency to watch the clock. The repetition of a clock from different angles also demonstrates Dean’s interest in exploring concepts of time and space. The instability of form through time is heightened by the presence of a blank twelfth square, which stands for as-yet-unrealized time in the grid of images.