2014 Release. * Limited edition of 100 copies worldwide. Hand signed and numbered by Marina Abramovic * 512 Hours is the first major performance by Marina Abramović since her monumental piece The Artist is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2010, in which visitors were invited to sit in silence opposite the artist and gaze into her eyes for an unspecified amount of time. Abramović performed this work every day for three months. In a unique work created for the Serpentine, Abramović will perform in the Gallery for the duration of her exhibition. Creating the simplest of environments in the Gallery spaces, Abramović’s only materials will be herself, the audience and a selection of props that she may or may not use. The public will become the performing body, participating in the delivery of an unprecedented moment in the history of performance art.

The pared-down nature of this exhibition corresponds to Abramovic´s interest in the historically well established relationship between art and ‘nothingness’; visual artists including Robert Barry, John Cage, Yves Klein, Gustav Metzger and Yoko Ono have all explored the notion of material absence within their practice.

The idea of emptiness – of minimalism, reduction and simplicity – plays an intrinsic role in Abramovic´’s own work, and has increasingly led to ‘more and more of less and less’, a longstanding aim that she recorded in her Artist’s Life manifesto of 2009. It is this journey towards immateriality that has led her to this unique moment in her work, where she will commit to an unscripted and improvised performance in the gallery space.