Visible Time
Time made visible: geometric rhythms that inspired Time Spiral and The Depth of Time.
Visible Time presents a series of conceptual drawings created between 2015 and 2017, where time is visualized through geometries, repetition, and layered rhythms. These experiments laid the foundation for later series such as The Depth of Time and the Holy Heptagon and Time Spiral. Here, time is no longer measured but seen—circles, lines, and structures capture cycles, durations, and transformation.
Foundations of Temporal Geometry
These early drawings explore the structural potential of geometric time visualization, centering on the use of the heptagon as a symbolic framework. By connecting seven-day rhythms to visual systems, the works in this section laid the foundation for later series such as The Depth of Time and the Holy Heptagon. Transparent layering and repeated forms create a sense of temporal depth, where time becomes visible through spatial rhythm.
Temporal Layers & Night Cycles
This section focuses on the visual contrast between day and night, capturing the layered rhythms of seasonal light and darkness. Using concentric structures and tonal gradation, the drawings render the passage of time as density and depth, rather than linear flow. They are closely related to the Seasonal Spirals series, sharing an interest in cyclical temporality and the atmospheric qualities of time.
Spiral Time Structures
These drawings transform time into a spiral-based language, where days, weeks, months, and years unfold through continuous curves. Each spiral offers a different scale of time, rendered through precise divisions and tonal rhythm. These early experiments were crucial in shaping the artist’s later approach in the Time Spiral series, where accumulation and rotation become central to how time is felt and seen.
Seasonal Spirals
Created in 2016, these four works visualize the shifting balance of light and darkness across the four seasons. Colored arcs indicate the length of daylight based on the 24 solar terms, while black segments mark nighttime. The handwritten dates on each piece correspond to the actual time of making, turning the drawing into a temporal trace. Closely linked to Temporal Layers & Night Cycles, these works reveal how seasonal color and duration merge in circular time.
Solar Term Drawings
This series is based on the 24-part lunisolar calendar, visualizing time through solar terms—short seasonal intervals. Each drawing records daily rhythms through spirals, elliptical forms, or segmented color bands, focusing on either light cycles or lunar movements. Some works reflect the transition of day and night; others isolate the presence of moonlight alone. These experiments directly informed the Moon Calendar series and expanded the artist’s vocabulary for mapping celestial time.
Introduction to the concept and visual-music structure of Time Sound (English).
Introduction to the concept and visual-music structure of Time Sound (German).
Artist Notes
Why do I keep wanting to understand time? What is time, really? How can something invisible be made visible?
Then one day, I realized—it reveals itself through light and darkness, the colors of the seasons, and the quiet rhythm of a day.
The rising and setting of the sun, the appearance and disappearance of the moon— I followed these movements, drawing lines, tracing circles, unfolding spirals.
My days and seasons were no longer something passing overhead, unseen and abstract. They became time I could actually see.
These raw drawings are records from the moment when time first began to take shape. The unseen texture of time flowed, overlapped, and spread across translucent paper.
These small beginnings later evolved into Time Spiral, Moon Calendar, and The Depth of Time and the Holy Heptagon.
And even now, I continue to ask: How can we truly see time? And might we be able to hear it, too?