Known from her participation in the 2007 Venice Biennial, among other international group shows The Time That Is Left is conceived as the first major solo presentation of the Dutch artist Manon de Boer. For this occasion the Frankfurter Kunstverein has presented eight large installations, including video projections and 16 mm films, which represent de Boer’s work from 1996 till 2007. It will be the most comprehensive presentation of de Boer’s work to date, as the exhibition will also display an ongoing audio archive of interviews the artist has been conducting with musicians, dancers and composers of the 1970s; as well as a display of images, text and scripts she uses as source materials.

The title The Time That Is Left, taken from a seminal essay by the Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben, refers to the major subject of the exhibition: the perception of time and the writing of history. For De Boer, history is not a linear account of events but the experience of continuously working through, selecting and linking memories in a very specific way. Using personal narration as a method, de Boer explores the relationship between language, time and claims to the truth. Narrated history – by iconic figures of their time such as Sylvia Kristel or Suely Rolnik – allows the artist to introduce the question of memory, belief as well as to investigate correspondences between lived time and history.

This exhibition was produced in collaboration with Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, where from 25 January to 24 February 2008 further works of the artist have been on display. Both institutions will together produce an extensive publication about de Boer’s work.
A catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition.

The Dutch Artist Manon de Boer (*1966) is based in Brussels and Amsterdam.