RIDICULOUSLY YOURS! Art, Awkwardness and Enthusiasm14.10.2023–25.2.2024
Opening:
Exhibition
The feeling or attitude of enthusiastic embarrassment is undoubtedly associated with a notion of humorous light-heartedness – but just as much with a sense of earnest persistence, against all odds. It is certainly associated with irony – but also with a deeply unironic, rather enthusiastic belief in the necessity and possibility of persevering and continuing with something that has been recognized as unpleasant or embarrassing. One of the most important attitudes or feelings underlying modern and contemporary art is an enthusiastic silliness that does not shy away from the embarrassing, the unreasonably silly. The exhibition, which spans epochs, includes works by around 100 artists from all over the world and spans an arc from earlier centuries of artistic creation to the immediate past.
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Jim Shaw, Labyrinth: I Dreamt I was Taller than Jonathan Borofsky, 2009
Photo: Mick Vincenz, 2022 © Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH
Text
The feeling or attitude of enthusiastic embarrassment is undoubtedly associated with a notion of humorous light-heartedness – but just as much with a sense of earnest persistence, against all odds. It is certainly associated with irony – but also with a deeply unironic, rather enthusiastic belief in the necessity and possibility of persevering and continuing with something that has been recognized as unpleasant or embarrassing. One of the most important attitudes or feelings underlying modern and contemporary art is an enthusiastic silliness that does not shy away from the embarrassing, the unreasonably silly. The exhibition, which spans epochs, includes works by around 100 artists from all over the world and spans an arc from earlier centuries of artistic creation to the immediate past.
In modernism since the 19th century in general and the classical avant-gardes of the early 20th century in particular, a very specific dialectic is at work: on the one hand, bold innovations, radical negation, and aesthetic dogmas – but on the other hand, a certain kind of laughter that formed the basis for the creation of this exhibition project. It is a laughter that is fun and at the same time – without wanting to scandalize only – undermines all conservatism, bigotry, morality and not least avant-garde dogmatisms. By opposing the use of culture to intimidate, to secure unearned privileges, this laughter shows how authority loses its grip, how the pompous gesture and the image of the hero are invalidated.
Thematic sections feature works by numerous important artists – from Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Alfred Jarry and Elsa von Freytag-Lohringhoven, Marcel Duchamp and René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico and Sturtevant, Maria Lassnig and Martin Kippenberger to numerous younger positions of contemporary art like Paul McCarthy, Nicole Eisenman, Fischli & Weiss, Isa Genzken, Katrin Plavčak, Kilunji Kia Henda, Ming Wong at all. RIDICULOUSLY YOURS! flirts with the humor of disaster, bad taste, the camp approach, B‑movie culture, science fiction, horror, etc., as well as immaturity, idiocy, intuition and, of course, passion – not to mention enthusiasm.
RIDICULOUSLY YOURS! Art, Awkwardness and Enthusiasm was previously shown at Bundeskunsthalle Bonn and Deichtorhallen Hamburg/Sammlung Falkenberg. In Graz, the exhibition takes place in cooperation with Neue Galerie at the Universalmuseum Joanneum.
Curated by Christina Ricupero and Jörg Heiser
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