Ever faster, ever higher, ever further -- the credo of postmodern society does not necessarily lead the human being to Mount Olympus.The exhibition will propose an image of today's world with the individual at its center.
INFINITE JEST
Ever faster, ever higher, ever further -- the credo of postmodern society does not necessarily lead the human being to Mount Olympus. On the contrary, in the early twenty-first century man wavers between euphoria and depression, and is confronted with the enticing opportunities of a global and virtual world as well as the challenge of using them to optimize his own life on an ongoing basis.
The exhibition will propose an image of today's world with the individual at its center. In analogy to the narrative structure of the eponymous novel "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace, the exhibition will spin a web of relationships between the various demands made on individuals today, demands in which the resistances and contradictions of reality -- a reality often described as lacking any alternative -- make themselves felt. The visually stunning films and installations by the American artist Ryan Trecartin, for instance, create a world that looks like a computergenerated version of itself moving and changing at a tearing speed and zooming in frontally on its permanently nervous, blathering protagonists. The show will feature some twenty artists, including Andrea Fraser, Alicja Kwade, Judith Hopf, Maurizio Cattelan, Kris Martin, and Daniel Richter.
Catalog
The credo of today's society without boundaries reads "ever faster, ever higher, ever further." In the early twenty-first century, man, oscillating between euphoria and depression, finds himself confronted with the promising opportunities of a global and virtual world as well as the challenge to constantly improve, optimize, and shape his life more efficiently. The presented works are not aimed at visualizing the contents of the eponymous epochal novel "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. The book rather explores the various demands confronting today's individual, in which the modes of resistance and the contradictions of a reality often described as lacking any alternative make themselves felt. The catalog is a commentary on the exhibition. The essays it contains are reproductions in a twofold sense: they reproduce the idea of the presentation in textual form, and they are reprints. The artistic manifestos also published in the book refer to the included essay by Alex Danchev on the one hand and are a constant companion to early-twentieth-century art on the other. They demonstrate the ever-recurring desire for renewal in a way of their own.
List of artists: Francis Alÿs, Maurizio Cattelan, Claire Fontaine, Peter Coffin, Lara Favaretto, Andrea Fraser, Karl Holmqvist, Judith Hopf, Ceal Floyer, Josh Kline, Alicja Kwade, Joep van Liefland, Helen Marten, Kris Martin, Navid Nuur, Daniel Richter, Michael Riedel, Anri Sala, Ryan Trecartin, and the Kopp Collection.