“The suspenders come from a place of wanting to bend time. I had been working with this idea through text before – my oldest work dates back to 1947. I wanted to push time bending in a more visual direction, so I started to make oversized wristwatches showing time going backwards. How else could time bending look like if not a clock going back in time? While making the watches I was drawn to the mechanical indicators for hours, minutes, and seconds that are called hands. From there I started a game of associations: clock hands as human hands and arms; the hour hand and minute hand stretched to the same length. I imagined these hands juxtaposed onto suspenders, the fashion accessory to hold trousers. The hands, or skeleton arms, literally grab, hug or clutch the space that was once temporal and is now physical. The arms are set in intervals of five minutes – 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30. The ceiling cuts the clock in half, picturing the line between 9 and 3 as a threshold. Since the suspenders are elastic, each position indicates two potential times 9:15 is also 3:45, and so on. I am entering a stage in my practice where I am systematizing the world around me, and taking apart the tools given to me. What could time bending look like as sculpture? How does it turn out? Morbid arms grabbing space.” (Bruno Zhu)