Horloge 1930

This watch by Hirsco, of indeterminate date, in an unknown place, is a little grey essay on time. The steel is tarnished, the numbers faded, and the hands, those little arms, seem to pause between one second and the next. I imagine Hirsco hunched over a workbench, squinting through a loupe, trying to get the gears just so. Did he feel like he was racing against time or trying to catch up with it? Maybe he was like a painter, trying to capture something fleeting. The way light hits a face, the way a feeling shifts, the way time slips through your fingers. A watch is a little machine that tries to pin down something that can’t be pinned. And maybe that’s what art is too. A way of marking time, not measuring it.