Pioneering ’60s conceptualist David Lamelas began, tellingly, as a sculptor. His explorations of time and space through film emerge from his desire “to produce sculptural forms without any physical volume.” Central to his career is his ongoing Time as Activity series, which began in 1969 in Dusseldorf when the artist filmed three separate views of the city in static, silent takes on 16mm, intercutting these with titles bearing the elapsed time of each. For the seventh instalment – after 40 years and excursions to Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, Warsaw, St. Gallen and Fribourg – Lamelas represents his native Buenos Aires via its landmark Plaza Congreso.

With tranquil elegance, economy and ostensible simplicity, Time as Activity (Buenos Aires) underlines Lamelas’ proposition that time is our own construct and that hyperrealism entails fiction.

Originally an in situ work exhibited opposite the Congreso, Time as Activity (Buenos Aires) comes to Toronto on the occasion of TIFF’s City to City focus on Buenos Aires.

Presented in collaboration with Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, ste. 124, 401 Richmond Street West. September 8 to 18.