Sunday. The day of uncertain time. A moment without duration, without end. A place where stillness contains every possibility of movement. It is a time given to the making of both trivialities and glories; the happy day of humankind, dedicated to contemplating the work, the world, and the beings that inhabit it. Perhaps nothing more than a suspension, a day in which all seems complete: social duty, divine mission, individual expectation. What remains is the space for personal consolation, for the play of intelligence, for testing the limits of the everyday.
Sunday is a metaphor for the abyss — impossible to overcome through contemplation alone. It urges us, like a confined animal, to search for an exit, for what comes next. Sunday does not simply precede Monday — that is the order of society. Sunday is the end of time, the day of the Lords.
On Sunday, spectacle gives way to ritual. It is the moment when one may hear and see oneself in the singular space of individuality. A private game of self with self, under the regime of solitude — without judgment, without audience — touched only by the simultaneity of others, equally absorbed in their happiness.
Sunday is the time of pleasure without function, devoted entirely to enjoyment. The suspension of responsibility confronts us with unexpected needs. It opens new rules of being, prompting us to smile not only with joy but with discovery. If there is any place from which to propose the future, it is always from within this uncertain time. Make no mistake: you are only a reflection of your Sunday, and these works seek to mirror the future of human attitudes — at once pessimistic and joyful.
Within the series, references are woven to Conceptual Performance (Solitary Confinement), Neo-Renaissance classicism (Human Labor), Sociology (Turismology), and the aesthetics of the everyday (Someone She Knows). Each is presented through the pictorial precision of Photorealism.
Joana Lucas + Jose del Palo
Berlin, June 2013