Take a Day for Yourself!

Many of the themes in the work of Mads Lynnerup, a Brooklyn-based Danish artist, have roots in his interest in the everyday, whether it’s the influence of billboards and advertisement texts, or his obsession with the daily routines taking place in public space. During his residency to create Take A Day For Yourself, Lynnerup recruited members of the Rensselaer and Troy communities willing to “call in sick” so he could follow each of them for a day to document their preferred activities. The rich and inventive uses that Lynnerup’s subjects made of the 12 hours of stolen time were shown on short videos and oversized posters that together made up a whimsical visual guide to taking a day off in Troy—or anywhere else—and to gently subverting some of the fundamental expectations of our society. Lynnerup has shown his work at the SFMOMA, The Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, MoMA PS1 New York City, and Warsaw’s Zacheta National Gallery of Art, and is represented in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, the Miami Art Museum, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the San Jose Museum of Modern Art.