Helen Berggruen: Suspension of the Future Tense

October 8–November 8, 2026
Arader Galleries
1380 Main Street, Saint Helena, California

Suspension of the Future Tense takes its title from art historian T. J. Clark’s The Sight of Death, a sustained meditation on paintings by the eighteenth-century French artist Nicolas Poussin.

The phrase describes a phenomenon particular to painting: the past is implied, the future remains unknown, and only the present moment is held before us. Under certain conditions, time seems to stand still.

“It can be light and dark at the same time.”

Across Helen Berggruen’s paintings, such contrasts are allowed to coexist: inside and outside, past and present, stillness and motion, light and dark. Each image gathers traces of what has already happened while withholding what might come next, suspending the viewer in the vivid uncertainty of now.

Suspension of the Future Tense, 2025
Oil on linen
30 × 40 inches