A Month of Sundays at Taylor Macklin

Artists: Juliette Blightman, Morgan Fisher, Vanessa Safavi, Joke Schmidt, Michael Smith, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder

Exhibition title: A Month of Sundays

Curated by: Clément Delépine

Venue: Taylor Macklin, Zurich, Switzerland

Date: September 22 – November 6, 2016

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Taylor Macklin, Zurich

The wait begins when there is nothing left to wait for, not even the end of the wait; the wait ignores and destroys the thing that is awaited; the wait waits for no one – Maurice Blanchot

As a teenager I had to wear braces. Like many of other kids, I spent long hours waiting for the orthodontist.

From his dull waiting room I remember mismatched chairs and a coffee table with aluminum legs. I vividly remember the posters of impressionists masters and the crumpled magazines from the year before. I remember the cartoonish molar drawn on a blackboard meant to teach kids how to brush their teeth. It had arms, which didn’t make much sense to me.

I mostly remember waiting, anxious for the pain to come. At some point I would inevitably tell myself that things didn’t have to be that way and I started fantasizing about an escape plan and the life I could lead should I simply decide to leave. In these moment, all seemed to be clearer. It didn’t have to be painful ever again, I just had to walk away. I never left but I remember wait as an empowering time.

The exhibition A Month of Sundays is considering waiting time and its many avatars as a symbolic place of all possible. It explores the mundanity and extraordinariness of passing time through a daily routine, a car’s odometer, or a sunset.

Vanessa Safavi, Each Colour is a Gift for You, 2015
10 taxidermied birds, Dimensions variable

Joke Schmidt, Studien von Warteräumen, 2014
Video installation, 5:47 min

Vanessa Safavi, Each Colour is a Gift for You, 2015
10 taxidermied birds, Dimensions variable

Juliette Blightman, Please water the plant and feed the fish, 2008
Pedestal, fishbowl, fish, plant (Crassula ovata), plant pot, apple, Dimensions variable