The Morning Desk
Essays, conversations and field notes from the bureau — on the artists, exhibitions and ideas we keep returning to.
Opening the desk…
The Timekeeper
In the black air night I sit amongst the trees all in a line. The watchful one is with me, the one I can’t focus on but who stays close by. She is the timekeeper. We sit together, quiet and expectant, until out of the black green grows up and out and falls in ripples of light, surrounding us on all sides. In front of us the ground opens up into black void paralysis panic and there is a staircase leading down. Between the green I watch a man in the distance slowly walk towards us. He is all shadow, made of night and I know that the only way out is down.
Active Rest
We’ve had a quieter start to 2026. With the year of the Fire Horse ahead, it’s time to catch up and come together.
Next Thursday in Vienna we begin with an especially inviting exhibition, Active Rest: An Exploration of Time, curated by Sara Alavi Kia. The exhibition brings together a vibrant group of artists working with painting, wall objects (and anesthesia), photography (and AI), textile, sound, light, and scent. Sara puts it beautifully:
In a culture shaped by acceleration and constant productivity, rest is often framed as absence, as a pause between moments of activity. Active Rest challenges this notion by presenting rest as a state of presence, attention, and engagement. To rest, in this context, is not to withdraw from experience, but to attune oneself differently: to allow other rhythms, senses, and modes of knowing to surface.