South of Copenhagen, among yellow houses, cobblestones and salty wind, Dragør preserves a silence that feels ancient. In this quietness, suspended between harbor and legend, stands Kyst Gallery, a small space dedicated to contemporary art, yet already capable of creating its own emotional geography. It is here, in this essential setting, that Lilith Black Bee presents her first solo exhibition, an event surprising not so much for the debut itself, but because such a rigorous, meditative and visionary work has chosen precisely this place to reveal itself in its entirety. The exhibition is titled Klokken er mange, a Danish expression meaning “it is late”, but one that contains a poetic quality: it does not mark the time, it names a condition. And indeed, walking through these works, one feels that time is not measured but inhabited.
“Klokken er mange: A Note on Time in the Art of Lilith Black Bee”, installation view at Kyst Gallery, ph. credits Maria Rand, courtesy Kyst Gallery Dragør, Danimarca
There is a moment, before realizing it is late, in which time has no name yet. It is the moment when the gaze rests and lingers on a work like Pieces of Self 2 by Lilith Black Bee. A grid of yellow and brown squares, hand-drawn with ink and watercolor, that does not shout but whispers. Each cell is the same, yet different; each stroke is measured but not sterile. It is time itself taking shape, not linearly, but as a breathed heartbeat, a silent count, a duration made visible. Lilith builds a liturgy of presence through methodical and inward works that do not seek spectacle but listening. Her gestures – minimal, repeated, patient – recall the numbers painted throughout life by Roman Opałka or the silent dates recorded by On Kawara. But while in them there was an urgency to archive existence, in Lilith there is the intention to inhabit it. The artist, Romanian by birth and now residing in Lyon, draws time as if she could contain it: 31,556,926 seconds in a year, written one by one, on thousands of sheets. A project that may never end, but that needs no end, because here time is not a path, it is a threshold.
Lilith Black Bee, “Now Day 2_65”, 2025, graphite pencil, acrylic ink and oil based gold marker on paper; “Now Day 2_66”, 2025, graphite pencil, acrylic ink and oil based gold marker on paper, courtesy of Kyst Gallery and the artist
Her works – Now, Pieces of Self, Peace of Mind, Wilderness – oscillate between order and dispersion, control and disorientation. In Now Day 1, the numbers line up like beads of a secular rosary, in an exercise that has something of mantra and metronome; the gesture repeats but does not become automatic, each digit is an engraved breath, an act of presence, it is almost as if in counting Lilith manages to remain still for a moment in the “here” without slipping into the after or the before. «I am in the present when I count the seconds» she confesses. And it is precisely here that her art becomes radical: in stubbornly seeking a form of duration that resists speed, that opposes distraction with devoted attention, made of ink and silence. Looking at her grids, one is reminded of Gaston Bachelard and his reflection on time, formulated in L’Intuition de l’instant (1932): we cannot truly love time without also losing it. But Lilith does not lose it. She crosses it, gathers it, transcribes it; and in doing so, fills it with meaning. Her works are intimate maps, chronologies without events, emotional geographies in which color becomes an affective temperature, the line a threshold, and repetition a form of care.
Lilith Black Bee, “Peace of Mind 26”, 2025, pigment gel pen, graphite pencil and India ink on paper; “Peace of Mind 26 (detail)”, 2025, pigment gel pen, graphite pencil and India ink on paper, courtesy of Kyst Gallery and the artist
Walking through the rooms of Kyst Gallery, one has the impression of entering a different temporal form. It is not the cold timelessness of the museum white, but something warmer, porous, vulnerable. The gallery, hidden among houses and the sea, welcomes the exhibition with the measure of a held breath. In Peace of Mind, repetition organizes itself like a low-voiced prayer; the surfaces are inhabited by minimal, almost shy signs, which nevertheless build entire inner worlds. It is a calligraphy of balance: perfection is not sought, but internal coherence, the right rhythm to remain. Looking at these works, one is invited to inhale, exhale, wait. Nothing “happens,” but everything occurs. What might seem an almost obsessive practice reveals itself instead as a ritual of centering, a form of silent resistance. There is no automatism, but listening. Each sheet is a diary without words, an exercise in awareness where the line becomes boundary, the interval vital space.
Lilith Black Bee, “Pieces of Self 2”, 2025, mixed media painting on hot pressed watercolor paper 100% cotton 300 gsm, courtesy of Kyst Gallery and the artist; “Pieces of Self 2 (detail)”, 2025, mixed media painting on hot pressed watercolor paper 100% cotton 300 gsm, courtesy of Kyst Gallery and the artist
Also in the Wilderness series, the mark transforms into landscape, a territory suspended between sky and earth. The stroke, while maintaining a certain clarity, softens into a flow that tries to become more fluid, almost chromatic waves to inhabit and cross. However, this softness at times seems to try to hide an internal tension, a fragile balance between control and abandonment. The works follow one another like moving horizons, layered in bands of yellow, blue, purple and orange alternating in unstable visual rhythms that seem to oscillate without finding a point of stillness. Here order wavers and opens to less governed, more instinctive zones, but this openness, although stimulating, sometimes risks feeling a bit too restrained, as if true liberation were still waiting. The artist does not seek a sharp break, but a measured permeability: a choice that can appear both strength and limit. The “wilderness” she tells of is not disorder, but a subdued truth, emerging only when one has the courage to truly let go.
Lilith Black Bee, “Wilderness 10”, 2025, pigment gel pen, graphite pencil and India ink on paper; “Wilderness 10”, 2025, pigment gel pen, graphite pencil and India ink on paper, courtesy of Kyst Gallery and the artist
There are artists who build worlds. And others who listen to them. Lilith Black Bee belongs to this second kind. Her works do not raise their voice, do not impose meanings, do not seek definitions. But they carry a subtler urgency: to stay close to what passes, to record time without mastering it. The exhibition’s title, Klokken er mange, does not merely indicate a time. It is an existential confession, that moment when one looks up and realizes that something has passed. Not something spectacular, but something that matters. A day. A presence. A life. Klokken er mange does not tell us it is too late. It only asks us to notice, to stop. To listen to what we lost while we were elsewhere. To gather time with the hand, one digit at a time, as she does. And then, perhaps, to start again.
Info:
Klokken er mange: A Note on Time in the Art of Lilith Black Bee
19/06 – 19/07/2025
Kyst Gallery
Kongevejen 23B, 2791 Dragør, Danimarca
www.kyst.gallery
She graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania. During her lifetime, she has experienced various arts including sculpture, theatre, dance and photography, and the latter one became the springboard for her eclectic and innovative artistic path. In 2010, she approached the art curatorial world and started to write reviews and critical texts; later, she founded “Artisti Italiani – arti visive e promozione”, an organisation which deals with all the promotional aspects of contemporary art.
NO COMMENT