28 March 2024 – 11 May 2024

16, Cecile Bieler-Butticaz, 1207 Geneva, Switzerland ↗

Sébastien Bertrand is pleased to present Assignment – Geneva, Walter Robinson’s fourth solo show at the gallery.

It started out like it always starts out.

The westbound plane was four hours late, with a twenty-minute hold at Istanbul on Pan Am Flight 204 from Bangkok. By the time he arrived in Geneva, it was eight o'clock in the evening.

Then, coming in off the passenger ramp and having his passport stamped — he’d had been no time to devise a cover and he was using his ordinary U.S. documents — he recognized several faces he knew from back home. It couldn't be avoided.

He chose a public telephone at random and dialed the number. The lights were coming on in the terminal building and the booth felt hot, although a cool wind came off Lake Geneva at this time of year.

"Gallery," a woman's voice said.

"The package is here," he said.

The gallery served as a multinational message drop and all-around safe house. It was a business that could ship to all points around the world.

He was a nondescript man dressed in nondescript clothes, his longish hair in need of a trim. He looked distracted and unhurried both. He had been at his work for a long time. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

He moved directly to the taxi stand and got into the first cab without turning his head to look back. He didn’t think he had been noticed. 

Geneva's downtown streets were brightly lighted and crowded, and from the promenade along the Rhone you could see the brilliant Jet d'Eau, the hundred-foot fountain that shot up from the surface of the lake.

He walked down the Quai Gustav-Ador and went up Rue Du-Roveray. He turned the corner and found the glass door open.  

The woman was waiting for him. "Sit down. You must be tired." 

"Yes, but we have to go on,” he answered. “That's the job.”

—Walter Robinson, New York, March 2024