In 1994, Esther Eppstein and a fellow artist moved into a vacant showroom on the first floor, whose shop window faced Rennweg. In August 1995, she opened her first art space in Zurich there. The name “Bilderladen Monotony” plays on the association with the capitalist board game Monopoly, in which Rennweg is Zurich’s most expensive street.
In 1995, the luxurious shopping street Rennweg looked sluggish, and Zurich’s city centre was still marked by the aftermath of the long-standing drug crisis around the main station. Monotony was not defined as an art space, but as a meeting place where friends could exhibit, experiment, and test themselves and their audience. Two series of short exhibitions, curated by Esther Eppstein and organised without funding, attracted an audience consisting mainly of friends from the Art School, squatters and the then still small Zurich music and art scene. Esther Eppstein’s family – her husband Mauro Arnold and their young children Moritz and Maria – were mostly there too. Between August and December 1995, 18 exhibition openings took place.
Right from the start, Esther Eppstein has been pursuing her vision of a space for her generation, which does not yet belong to any art scene. On the afternoon of the first opening, she crossed Rennweg to the “Ganz” photography shop opposite, bought her first analogue compact camera, and subsequently photographed everything that happened at Monotony.