Time to Spare: An Overview by Richard Brett
In their joint exhibition, Time to Spare, Minas Konsolas, a professional Baltimore artist and David Valle, a Baltimore physician, scientist, and photographer, invite us into a visually-rich, multilayered and playful universe that exists somewhere in that precious twilight between work and sleep, duty and unconsciousness. More than a world of leisure, though, theirs is a playground for the mind, the imagination, and the soul as we seek solace, balance, meaning in a hectic world. Notably, men, timepieces, even guilt itself are scarce or absent in a landscape predominated by women, and dappled with signs of nature…a world that is nurturing, mother-like, and indifferent to time itself – both predating and outlasting traditionally masculine conceits of achievement, success, boundaries, and schedules. To become one with this universe, these works suggest, is to shed our concerns, drives, deadlines, and inhibitions…simply, joyously, to be.
Richard Brett is an associate Professor of Cinema and Communication at McDaniel College.