Six Easy Pieces

Time is the elusive entity that quietly percolates through our fingers. We have to impose a rhythmic order upon our existence – the sound of a clock, music with its beats and pauses, the ticking of machinery – since only this order allows us to sense the pulse of time as it flows.

Reynold Reynolds uses “Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher”, a book by renowned physicist Richard P. Feynman as the scientific foundation for his artistic exploration of the issue of time. The artist juxtaposes imagery of scientific inquiry various measuring instruments and chemical equipment with organic matter, fish, flowers or with a human body, whose life span will inevitably come to an end, despite all of humankind’s scientific achievements. The video is inundated with traditional symbols of memento mori: mirrors that hint at the transitory nature of beauty; books that stand for the vanity of knowledge or a roulette wheel that reminds us of the unpredictable nature of life and death. Reynolds, a former physicist himself, mixes together imagery of transformation and decay to stimulate the viewer's contemplation of the issue of time and to show that artists and scientists often prove to be accomplices in the process of making sense of the world. (Olena Chervonik)

* We can only show an excerpt of this work in the online archive. For the complete version, please contact the artist.