Christian Marclay's The Clock at Paula Cooper

If you're not reading this on the sidewalk in front of the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea, chances are that you're too late to catch the video installation that has gripped the New York art world for the past month. The Clock, by Christian Marclay, is a 24-hour exploration of time, a collage of film clips highlighting the passage of time that runs in synch with local time. (When it's 10:10 on your watch, Tom Hanks stares at a clock reading 10:10 in Catch Me If You Can, immediately followed by Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis racing to stop a bomber in Die Hard With a Vengeance.) The lines for the show have stretched to tremendous proportions, but once inside the theater you see why: this hypnotic work forces you to confront the mundane terror of the slow ticking away of life.

Photo: Benjamin Norman, The New York Times