Sea Waves, the Echo of Time, and Vanishing: “Like Another Time, in the Same Place” at Hua International

In Samuel Beckett’s 1959 radio play Embers, the character Ada says while listening to the sound of the sea: “It sounds like a sound I used to hear. Like another time, in the same place.” The exhibition “Like Another Time, in the Same Place,” meeting viewers at Hua International gallery in Berlin between September 11 and October 17, 2026, stands precisely in that timeless void left by this sentence. Bringing together works by Zhang Peili, Alfredo Jaar, and David Horvitz, the selection focuses on the multi-layered structure of time that, instead of flowing linearly, constantly returns like waves, drifts, and leaks into today.

The Intersection of Memory, Drift, and Light

At the center of the exhibition lies Zhang Peili’s three-channel video installation At Sea. We watch a man drifting alone in the open sea amidst the wreckage of a sinking ship. Despite the suitcases floating around him, a soaked teddy bear, and a lifebuoy, there is no trace of panic in the man’s demeanor; he calmly unlocks his phone, sips his drink, and even plays Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto on his phone before leaning back. This contrast between the man presented like black-and-white archival footage and the vividly colored sea surrounding him evokes a strange encounter between past and present. The LED screens composed of lost faces spread across the floor by the artist also nourish this feeling of indeterminate vanishing.

Amidst this drifting, Alfredo Jaar’s red neon work I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On casts a single, clear light onto the space with Beckett’s phrase: Continuing even where both stopping and moving forward have become impossible. Meanwhile, Jaar’s work One Million Points of Light, photographing the Atlantic from the coast of Angola, juxtaposes the light hitting the water’s surface with the unforgettable historical weight of the slave trade resting beneath the ocean. The sea recognizes no distinction between past and present; it continues to hold memory within.

David Horvitz surrenders the exhibition’s own time directly to the rhythm of nature. His bronze bell work, Nautical Dusk, ensures the gallery closes every evening at that exact nautical twilight when the sun drops 12 degrees below the horizon. With a photography series dedicated to artist Bas Jan Ader, who sailed into the ocean and vanished in 1975, a neon work in his own handwriting questioning while taking a shower how water was once a cloud, and a temporary sea wave stamp applied to visitors’ wrists, Horvitz infuses the cycle of water and time into the capillaries of daily life.

For those who wish to keep time according to daylight and the sound of the sea rather than city clocks in the Berlin Art Week atmosphere of mid-September, this is a profoundly deep exhibition that will echo in the mind for a long time.

Exhibition Note from NO-26 Editor

Exhibition: Like Another Time, in the Same Place

Venue: Hua International (Berlin, Germany)

Dates: September 11 – October 17, 2026 (Opening: Thursday, September 10, 18:00 – 22:00)

Artists: Zhang Peili, Alfredo Jaar, David Horvitz

Aura: An impressive Berlin selection fed by Samuel Beckett’s texts; combining ocean memory, vanishing, and the fluidity of time with AI-supported video installations, red neons, and bronze bells ringing at nautical dusk.