Noga Linchevsky"Time Zone"The David Lopatie International Conference Center
At the outset of the journey, Noga Linchevsky stood on the banks of time, marveling at its uniform, rhythmic flow — undisturbed by the events it carries on its surface, like foam on the water. Flowing from the distant past to an undefined future, from the depths of the universe to present existence, time moves without destination or purpose, except simply to be: time.
Standing inquisitively in the face of time’s infinite passage, confronted by its endless flow, Linchevsky began counting, recording, and documenting the fleeting moments before they vanish. This endeavor has persisted ever since. “I create action drawings,” she explains. “The repetitive, meditative act of counting time sustains the works, imbuing them with meaning and substance.”
Linchevsky strives to join the flow of passing time, exploring its modalities and expressions — cosmic, natural, and urban rhythms. She traces the paths of her subjective time, driven by the desire to “materialize time,” seeking to uncover a tangible reality within its elusive nature. This quest defines and directs her creative process. “Time is my raw material for creation,” she says.
Years of counting and documenting, through an attentive drawing action, are distilled as the continuous construction of time archives. These archives are inscribed in freehand drawings on fabrics — some vast in scale, hinting at the dimensions of the universe, space, and time; others drawn on plasterboards that evoke ancient Sumerian tablets from the dawn of human history.
In the face of Linchevsky’s monumental works, one is led to ask: Can we, as human beings — whose time is fleeting in comparison to cosmic cycles — truly grasp the essence of time? Rabindranath Tagore explored this question in his poem "Endless Time":
Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.
There is none to count thy minutes.
Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers.
Thou knowest how to wait.
Indeed, Linchevsky testifies that while working, drawing on an enormous canvas that she steadily unrolls and stretches on the work table in her Tel Aviv studio, she speaks aloud — a seismographic monologue she recites while drawing: Time passes, time passes...
“I chose this literal expression, the mantra ‘time passes,’ because in sound and tone, it closely reflects the flow of time for me,” she explains. “I perceive an openness and a wide range of sounds, elasticity, rhythm, and frequencies. To me, these auditory possibilities offer a sonic ‘materialization’ of passing time. Though the works are silent, they harbor a kind of visual musicality. At times, I think of them as musical scores.”
Linchevsky’s choice of what could be called “seismographic writing” allows for an immediate, primal, and evolving composition and documentation of her subjective experience of time. The nature of her drawing, the shifts in form within her writing, act as a kind of seismograph — capturing the movement of her hand, her breathing, the motion of her body against the fabric, as well as her mood and emotions as she counts time.
The large canvases invite viewers to pause. Perceiving the details and occurrence, along with the attempt of deciphering the writing, require the viewers to dedicate their time — in a way, passing the baton of time-counting to them.
“The words that best capture my perspective on time,” Linchevsky says, “were expressed by Borges in his essay A New Refutation of Time: ‘Time is the substance I am made of.’”
