Shot in a former Masonic temple in Los Angeles – a five-story warren of large, cavernous rooms akin to a windowless convention center – Temple Time unfolds like a horror-movie group expedition in a campsite wasteland. Exploring the mildly eerie wilderness substitute, the characters talk about what they see instead of how they feel, giving the impression that everything they encounter is a discovery. For some characters these discoveries feel like memories of events that are about to repeat – the past and the future seem to occur simultaneously via overlapping layers of reality. The use of different video-capturing technologies – including handheld cameras, drones, and GoPro action cameras mounted to the actors’ bodies – offers numerous perspectives and vantage points, reinforcing Trecartin’s exploitation of cinematic discontinuities. In Temple Time, purpose and agency are constantly delayed and the multi-linear narratives are expressed in a networked sense of time.

Temple Time, 2016 © Ryan Trecartin Courtesy the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Sprüth Magers
SONAE Room
entry: General ConditionsRYAN TRECARTIN "Temple Time"
2019-03-15
2019-03-31
Partnerships
On Exhibition
Mily Possoz. A poetics of space
2025-10-01
2026-02-01
Curatorship: Emília Ferreira
The exhibition “Mily Possoz. A Poetics of Space” continues the research into the lesser-studied Portuguese modernists artists present in the collections of the MNAC and Millennium bcp.
Impressões Digitais. MNAC Collection
2024-12-12
2026-12-30
Curatorship: Ana Guimarães, Emília Ferreira, Maria de Aires Silveira e Tiago Beirão Veiga
Consisting of founding works of contemporary Portuguese art historiography, from 1850 to the present day, the MNAC's collection holds several national treasures.
Since 1911
2022-05-26
2026-05-26
An intervention that celebrates 110 years of the MNAC.