Journal de Résistance

Using a few handwritten words, one or more photographs, and occasionally newspaper cuttings, Daniel Blaufuks embarks on a daily exercise in observation, poetry and introspection. Apart from the regularity of the practice and the date of the day, the only figure he imposes on himself is that of the frame of an A4 page promised to the composition of the day. The project Les jours sont comptés (Days are numbered), launched in 2018, seeks to make the artist’s questions, reflections and obsessions tangible. But while it is indeed an attempt to write a diary, the first person singular is often absent, and reading it will give us little insight into the intimate life of its author. It is the diary of a child of exile, who blurs into the words of several languages: that of his Jewish grandparents exiled from Germany and fleeing Nazism; Portuguese, his adopted language; French, the language of the Surrealists and of Perec, which runs through his work; and finally English, which calls forth the fulgurating voice of Bob Dylan or of our cinematic imaginations. The subjects he depicts are never really spectacular. He has made Jules Verne’s injunction “Look with all your eyes, look!