Shortly before the first lockdown, the Austrian conceptual artist and poet Kurt Ryslavy began a new series of paintings titled Werktagsmaler (“Weekday Painter”).

For this body of work he defined a strict rule: each painting had to be produced exclusively in daylight and within the framework of a conventional working week. The finished works were later presented in glass display cases, emphasizing both the paintings themselves and the temporally structured process of their production.

The publication Nine-to-Five Painter brings together the works created between February 2020 and August 2021 and documents this series in book form. At the same time, the project reflects the ongoing pressure placed on artists to adapt their production to the expectations of the commercial art market.

While the paintings were originally produced under clearly defined temporal, spatial, and economic constraints, their assembly in the book reveals a different perspective: the works appear as a continuous sequence of a working process that opens up alternative temporal structures and potential trajectories.