Hans Josephsohn Centenary Phillip Meier remembers the artist on his 100th birthday

We run around, but he is a master at pausing. Hans Josephsohn is the great deceleration of contemporary art. He would have been a hundred years old this year.

By Philip Meier

We're wasting time. Constantly. Even now, reading this article. What does it bring us? We want to see results, to have a concrete benefit. And to achieve all this, we waste – a lot of precious time.

This starts with the daily washing up. We do it reluctantly because it costs us precious minutes. We don't take enough time for this, in a hurry as we are. So we rush through the day, from task to task. Our whole life is like a single post run. And on the way to our goal we are soon exhausted and lost to ourselves.

This is not without a certain tragicomic quality. Sometimes we still stumble. Such a stumbling block could be the red light at the intersection or a computer glitch. Then we pause momentarily. With a bit of luck, the sigh at the postponement becomes a respite. And we may realize: stumbling blocks are our salvation.

Someone who actually did nothing else throughout his life than create stumbling blocks, put obstacles in people's paths, stumbling blocks, so to speak, with which he confronted us: that was the Swiss artist Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012 ). He still does it today, through his work - and with brutal force. Yes, stones, erratic boulders, he places in front of our noses instead of a human figure, throws misshapen lumps at us and indicates to us: Now look what you can do with it!

And then we'll see. And see nothing. It is extremely difficult to read anything into the shapeless, cracked bodies, the closed-looking volumes, the bulky masses. It feels like a complete waste of time – again! And reflexively we want to rush on. If there wasn't also this other reflex: the ambition for a result. So that the journey, all the time spent, was worth it.