“Time Out of Time” opens Saturday, September 12 at Nüart
Gallery, bringing deep geologic time face to face with the
present moment
SANTA MONICA, CA — Nüart Gallery announces Time Out of Time, a new solo exhibition by artist
William T. Carson, opening Saturday, September 12, 2026, with an artist reception from
3:00 to 5:00 PM and an artist talk at 3:00 PM and running through October 3.
The body of work grew out of Carson’s fascination with time: the collision between human time and
deep time, measured time and immeasurable time, abstract time and felt time, time in all of its many
layered and varied forms.
Coal has been Carson’s primary medium for over a decade. He is drawn to the material for the way it
reflects the brevity of a single life set against geologic timescales, a memento mori material. To hold a
piece of coal is to hold ancient sunlight: plants that absorbed sunlight in Montana sixty million years
ago, later buried, compressed, and transformed into a flammable black rock. Coal, in this sense, is time
made material.
In the series Second Nature and O’Clock, compositions inspired by clock faces emerge from fragments
of mica catching light against the deep shadow of coal. The pairing of deep time with daily clock-time
is meant to call attention to a paradox: an hour set against sixty million years feels like a grain of sand
in an endless desert, yet millions of years only accumulate through the slow passage of time, one
moment at a time.
The show’s centerpiece is a clepsydra, an ancient water-clock form whose name comes from the Greek
for “water thief.” In Carson’s installation, water drips onto boulders of coal, marking the passing of
time while activating the coal to produce a faint crackling sound, the sound of the present moment
falling onto millions of years of accumulated time.
The exhibition’s title carries three meanings for Carson. The first is the expansive sense of time that
emerges when chronological time falls away and a place, moment, or object exists in an open present.
The second is the paradox of time itself, understood at once as a predictable, steady mechanical march
and as something that stretches and bends, the way memories persist in the present, a single day can
feel expansive while months pass in a blur, and time seems to speed as we grow older. The third is
literal: the works in the exhibition are both about time and made of time, built from materials that are
themselves the product of millions of years of geologic process.
Carson traces his interest in these subjects in part to his years as Program Manager at the Holt/Smithson
Foundation, from 2019 to 2025, where he worked closely with the creative legacies of Nancy Holt
(1938–2014) and Robert Smithson (1938–1973), two artists whose own engagement with time, geology,
and the cosmos shaped his desire to explore these questions in his own work.
Carson credits growing up on a cattle ranch in rural Montana, surrounded by coal mines, for his interest
in working with the material to create paintings, sculptures, sound performances, and time-based
installations.
William T. Carson working in his family’s ranch studio, Montana, summer 2026.
Time Out of Time brings different scales and experiences of time into proximity: geological and
astronomical time, mechanical and calendrical time, the fleeting present and the duration of a human
life. The exhibition, Carson notes, is ultimately an acknowledgment that deep time may never be fully
grasped intellectually, but perhaps we might encounter its traces through beauty.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
William T. Carson is an artist whose work considers cultural relationships to fossil fuels and raises questions
about how we value natural materials. He studied architecture at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad in
Copenhagen, and in 2015 graduated with Distinction in Art Studio from Colorado College. From 2019 to
2026, Carson was Program Manager & Assistant Curator at Holt/Smithson Foundation. He was an artist in
residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in 2025.
Carson is represented by Nüart Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and lives in the foothills of the Sangre de
Cristo Mountains with his wife and dog.
EXHIBITION DETAILS
William T. Carson: Time Out of Time
On view September 12 – October 3, 2026
Opening reception and artist talk: Saturday, September 12, 2026, 3:00 – 5:00 PM Nüart Gallery
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue, Suite B4
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11:00 AM–5:00 PM
MEDIA CONTACT
Nüart Gallery
Diana Cignoni
(424) 900-3888
fineartla@nuartgallery.com