Shai Azoulay’s paintings often depict an imagined mystical space in which reality and daydreams fluidly melt into one another, resulting in escapist tableaus that seduce and intrigue. In the painting Time Table, an individual is seen hunched over a table, arranging the placement of artwork and figures with the strategic precision of a chess player. The title of this painting, itself, is a double entendre in the splitting of what would normally be a single word, ‘timetable.’ The split stretches the meaning of the title, at once referring to a tabulated schedule as well as to the physical presence of table and time, the latter signified by the clock hung on the wall. The concept of time, therefore, is likewise treated with elasticity, highlighting the surrealist illusion engendered in the scene. Created during lockdown, the painting addresses (amongst other things) the current strangeness of time and our non-linear relation to reality, finding charm and mystery in unexpected ways.