RIDICULOUSLY YOURS! Art, Awkwardness and Enthusiasm

Press talk

12.10.2023, 10:30 am, Meeting point, Welcome and Curators‘ tour at Neuen Galerie Graz
11:00 am, Curators‘ tour at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark

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.

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.

with Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Johannes Baargeld, Hugo Ball, Judith Bernstein, Jean-Luc Blanc, Anna & Bernhard Blume, Pieter Bruegel d. Ä., Nina Childress, Velimir Chlebnikov, Yun Choi, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Jeremy Deller, Theo van Doesburg, Rosie Dowd-Smyth, Mimosa Echard, Nicole Eisenman, Max Ernst, Hans Finsler, Peter Fischli und David Weiss, Isa Genzken, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Georg Anton Gumpp, Ramin Haerizadeh & Rokni Haerizadeh & Hesam Rahmanian, Raoul Hausmann, Heinrich Hoerle & Anton Räderscheidt, Marcel Janco, Alfred Jarry, Mike Kelley, Katia Kelm, Martin Kippenberger, Jakob Lena Knebl, Jiří Kovanda, Marko Lulić, Calvin Marcus, Fabian Marti, Paul McCarthy, John Miller, Shana Moulten, MRZYK et MORICEAU, Henrike Naumann, Wong Ping, Pierre la Police, Rob Pruitt, Hans Richter, Roee Rosen, Mika Rottenberg, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Jim Shaw, Roman Signer, Cora Spassvogel, Erich Spießbach