Presented from June 18 to July 23, 2022 at Galerie Jean-Kenta Gauthier / Odéon, The Days Are Numbered (January) is the second exhibition at the gallery of the diary of Daniel Blaufuks (b. 1963, lives in Portugal).

Since spring 2018, Daniel Blaufuks has been creating a meticulous composition of instant photographs and text on a sheet of A4 paper every day, before stamping it with a number on the front and inscribing the date on the back. On certain days, he adds documents or objects. Entitled The Days Are Numbered, this vast project is like an imprecise diary recording events from the author's life, as well as reflections on the world, literature and photography. Behind the melancholy punctuated by outbursts of joy, anger, wonder and indignation, Daniel Blaufuks nurtures hope: by numbering each day, he counts the days that have passed, creating a kind of inverted countdown to his life.

The exhibition The Days Are Numbered (January) focuses on items no. 241 to 271, which make up the January 2019 diary. This was the first time the author had written the very title of the series as a commentary on a day: "the days are numbered." (Sunday, January 6, 2019). The Days Are Numbered has Daniel Blaufuks' obsessions as its recurring visual motifs - photographs of two windows, flowers in his garden or rocks on the beach - and its words appear in the languages he uses in his life - Portuguese, German, English, French. For Daniel Blaufuks, The Days Are Numbered is like a lifeline. By recording both events and the things that separate them, The Days Are Numbered is like a counterpart to Attempting Exhaustion, the artist's other vast project. Since 2009, he has been photographing his two windows, reiterating in photography Georges Perec's literary project in the text An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (1975), from which the title of the series is borrowed: "My aim (...) has been to describe the rest: what we don't usually notice, what we don't notice, what doesn't matter: what happens when nothing happens but time, people, cars and clouds. For as Daniel Blaufuks repeats: we always photograph when something happens, never when nothing happens. What happens then, though - that's the subject of Attempting Exhaustion."

Full conversation on our YouTube channel.