James Rosenquist is considered one of the most important Pop Art artists next to Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein. The American painter is influenced by pop culture and the visual aesthetics of the advertising industry and is known above all for his colourful and fragmented works.

The Hole in the Center of the Clock is a graphic by James Rosenquist and is part of the series “The Hole in the Middle of Time and The Hole in the Wallpaper”. Time and space are the main themes that have preoccupied James Rosenquist since he turned contemporary culture on its head in the early 1960s with paintings that split up both ideas and images. His penetration into the cosmic mysteries is accompanied by a practical skill not only with paint on canvas, but also with low-tech mechanics. For over four decades, he has integrated moving parts as diverse as conveyor belts and laser clocks into his paintings. These interests and skills come together in two powerfully innovative themes that made up an exhibition of new work at the Acquavella Galleries in New York in 2010. The Hole in the Middle of Time is a series of seven works depicting images of clock faces, the three largest of which feature motorized rotating mirrors. Hole in the Center of the Clock is one of the works that was also published as an original graphic.

The Hole in the Wallpaper is a series of fourteen motorized paintings, each reproducing a smaller version of an earlier painting by the artist. In the center of each work is a round mirror. While the paintings rotate, the mirrors remain static and reflect the viewer. James Rosenquist’s last major museum exhibition for the time being was the groundbreaking retrospective of his work initiated by Sarah Celeste Bancroft as co-curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Menil Collection and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in 2003, which traveled to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Wolfsburg Museum in 2004.