Pablo Bronstein: Clocks
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 10, 6–8pm
297 Tenth Avenue, New York
Olney Gleason is pleased to present an exhibition of new works on paper by London-based artist Pablo Bronstein (b. 1977, Buenos Aires), on view at our 297 Tenth Avenue gallery from September 10 through October 17, 2026. Clocks features a suite of imagined antique mantel clocks complete with allegorical elements, deepening Bronstein’s longstanding fascination with the history of aesthetics and bourgeois material culture. The exhibition anticipates Bronstein’s upcoming solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in Spring 2027 and marks his return to New York, where he staged a solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2009.
Extending as far as 6 feet wide, each work on view comprises an imaginary model for a clock. Drawing from vintage pattern books from his personal collection, Bronstein combines design elements from various styles and movements, creating original compositions that resist historical categorization. He draws inspiration from the mantel clocks that filled family homes across 18th-century Europe, filled with allegorical motifs and today recognized as material projections of human imagination. Bronstein presents these at large scale, as if to magnify designs ready to be manufactured. The works are united by this fixed format, inviting the suggestion that the elements could be swapped in limitless variations.
Bronstein’s clocks contain visual motifs that suggest various time zones in relation to one another. Classical Triumphant (2026), the largest work in the exhibition, combines Classical architectural elements found in major cities including London and Washington DC. Others, such as New World (2026), Emporium (2026), or Meissen (2026), make symbolic use of animals to explore fantastical projections of other places. Bronstein has long made use of this device, notably in works such as Greenwich Pendulum Mantel Clock (2018) in the collection of The British Museum – a world time clock set to Greenwich Mean Time with smaller faces of corresponding times in former British colonial capitals – as well as Grand Pendule Coloniale (2012) in the collection of the RISD Museum.
Pablo Bronstein: Clocks is the artist’s first exhibition with Olney Gleason and follows the recent announcement of Bronstein’s representation by the gallery earlier this year. It follows Bronstein’s solo exhibition The Temple of Solomon and Its Principal Contents, an exhibition of historicist reconstructions of the biblical structure, at the historic Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, UK, in 2025, as well as his inclusion in the Chengdu Biennale in 2026. The artist’s work is currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Tate Britain, London.
Pablo Bronstein lives and works in London. He attended Slade School of Fine Art and Goldsmiths College, London. He has staged solo exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2009), REDCAT, Los Angeles (2014), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2015), Tate Britain, London (2016), Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (2021), and others. He has staged performances at Tate Modern, Performa, The High Line, Saddlers Wells, and elsewhere. His work is collected by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The British Museum, London; Tate, United Kingdom; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, among others.
