Postadult

“A man cannot become a child again, or he will become childish. But does the naivety of the child not please him, and must he not strive again on a higher level to reproduce his truth?”
Karl Marx (1857)

Much of what helped earlier generations to grow up is suspect to us today: driving a car, wearing high heels, drinking alcohol, having sex, flirting, making jokes and and and! The way we dress, we not only often look like children; we also think and feel – naively or precociously – like them. We prefer not to have sex at all. Bad words and small gestures (“microaggressions”) hurt us quickly. We are warned against smoking and “adult language”, and children tell us how the planet is going to be in the future.

The only thing that could free us from our new, post-adult childhood would probably be to look at it, acknowledge its reality and smile a little lovingly about it. In doing so, we would display a typical adult strength that Sigmund Freud described as humor – and which he remarked that children do not need it to be happy in life.

The exhibition brings together evidence of this humor in art, supplemented by finds from curiosity cabinets and scientific collections.

Participaiting artists: AES+F, Blue Noses, Götz Bury, Brian Calvin, Gelitin, Gerhard Gutenberger, Lisz Hirn, Beate Hofstadler, Paul Horn, Eva Kadlec, Elke Silvia Krystufek, Jarmila Mitrikova + David Demjanovic, Stephanie Mold, Tex Rubinowitz, Barbara Ungepflegt, Thomas Weinberger