Timemuseum: Wilhelm Moser
General Assembly is honoured to present Timemuseum the current chapter, of a decades’ long exploration of memory, decay and impermanence, by Wilhem Moser. Moser’s works reference his journeys across the planet, and into his own subconscious. Timemuseum features ceramic, glass and bronze sculptures, and mixed media paintings and is Moser’s first UK exhibition.
There is something uncanny about encountering the Timemuseum, a congregation of sculptural figures that at first glance, are nearly identical. Linger, and the eye begins to notice: a tiny difference in the head, a shift in texture, a subtle divergence in posture. Each form hums with its own frequency, as though the Moser has not merely shaped them, but received them, emissaries from a place beyond linear time. To stand among them is to stand within a silent chorus of forgotten selves, gesturing toward memory, grief, and the mystery of individuation.
Moser reminds us he is a channel, serving us a museum of echoes. Psychic fossils of lineage, shadow, and longing. Lost Souls unfolds as an inner architecture, a timemuseumwithin, where rooms of self are opened: the ancestral gallery, the chamber of exile, the vestibule of forgotten dreams. The viewer is invited not to observe, but to enter and to experience, to move through these forms as through their own inner corridors, where parts of self, long unseen begin to stir.
Moser made The Grotto, on his property in France, placing his clay Lost Souls in a limestone cave structure, reputedly the shelter for a hermit. Safely installed as guardians of the cave, Moser photographed them, and painted the photograph on canvas with ink and oil.
In Sebastian, we are drawn towards questions of freedom. Sebastian was a bodyguard of the brutal Emperor Diocletian, who ruled through fear and control, the shadow archetype of the emperor card in the Tarot deck. When his Christian faith was exposed, Diocletian ordered Sebastian to death. Shot with hundreds of arrows, Sebastian survived, to be beatified and remembered as the wounded mystic, the soul that cannot be erased.
Three Eyes again references external control and surveillance, where free thinking and deeper understanding are discouraged. The motif reappears on buildings in Plan B and Glasshouse, an ominous reminder we live in an age of being watched.
To spend time with the works presented by Moser is to decelerate, to enter a state where the boundary between self and sculpture begins to soften. In this threshold space, the works becoming openings. Ultimately, this exhibition is about return, an ancient re-memberence. Summoned by the devoted hands of an artist deeply in tune with the archive within.
Biography:
Wilhelm Moser (1947), is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Düsseldorf, Germany, and Passavant, France. Moser’s practice bridges sculpture, painting, photography, film-making, and conceptual installations. Rooted in craftsmanship, his artistic journey began with an apprenticeship in joinery and carpentry under his father, Alois Moser, before studying at the Folkwang Schule in Essen and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.
Moser had a pivotal encounter with Andy Warhol in 1984 that led him to New York. Encouraged by Warhol, and introduced to the Charles Cowles Gallery, Moser became part of the dynamic art scene of the era. In 1985, he co-founded The Manipulator Magazine with David Colby, an influential platform dedicated to spotlighting both celebrated and overlooked artists, living or otherwise.
Moser has exhibited extensively in Europe and the United States, including solo and group shows at the Charles Cowles Gallery (New York), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Creatis Gallery (Paris), Galerie Niepel (Düsseldorf), Galerie Gmyrek (Düsseldorf), South Art Gallery (Miami), Galerie Schreier & von Metternich (Düsseldorf), and Galerie The Box (Düsseldorf), among others.
TIMEMUSEUM is an ongoing project exploring memory, decay, and permanence, and is Moser’s first UK solo exhibition.
