Image: Galerie Tschudi, Zuoz
Galerie Tschudi presents Su-Mei Tse’s exhibition ‘Blue Monday’ at its Zurich location from 4 September to 31 October 2026, at Rämistrasse 5, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland.
The exhibition explores music, memory, vulnerability, silence and perception through photographic, sculptural and mixed-media works.
For Tse, music evokes memories, while her recent work has increasingly engaged with vulnerability and how to deal with it; the exhibition addresses the uncertainty arising from current crises in everyday life.
The title refers to 1980s music and evokes an ambiguous ‘Monday hangover’ state that nevertheless contains something positive, while the exhibition is described as fundamentally affirmative and sometimes light-hearted. The New Wave and post-punk movements of the 1980s were formative for Tse, whose interest lies in their rebellious mindset and the possibility of breaking out of given structures.
In ‘Blue Monday (Variations)’ (2026), Tse makes subtle colour shifts as a playful attempt to reconstruct from memory Peter Saville’s famous 1988 cover design; she notes that six colours allow for 720 possible combinations.
The exhibition frames its engagement with the 1980s as an encounter between past and present rather than a nostalgic return, with past forms changing as they meet new impressions. Tse transforms the heaviness and accusatory potential of the world’s uncertainty through attention and poetry, opening up a new perspective.
