Group show at the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Allemagne,
From nov. 11 2022 to apr. 10 2023,
Curated by Cristina Ricupero et Jörg Heiser
With Jean Luc Blanc, Pieter Bruegel, Giorgio de Chirico, Pauline Curnier-Jardin, Marcel Duchamp, Josef Donner, Nicole Eisenman, James Ensor, Max Ernst, Fischli & Weiss, Isa Genzken, George Grosz, Georg Anton Gumpp, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Hannah Höch, Alfred Jarry, Martin Kippenberger, Paul McCarthy, Francis Picabia, Sigmar Polke, René Magritte, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Shana Moulton, Sturtevant, Ming Wong and more…
« Beg to report sir, I am an idiot » is how George Grosz, the great painter and caricaturist of the Weimar Republic, subtitled his caricature of a soldier, in which he criticized the uniform conceit of his time with biting humour.
Very serious, but also decidedly ridicules, the entire exhibition illuminates the enthusiastic awkwardness in modern and contemporary art, which does not shy away from the embarrassing, the unreasonably silly. The enjoyable tour includes works by about 100 artists from all over the world, spanning from earlier centuries of art-making to the immediate present.
In modernism since the 19th century, and especially in the classical avant-garde of the early 20th century, a very specific direction can be identified: on the one hand, bold innovations, radical negation, and startling aesthetic principles – but on the other hand, a certain kind of laughter that formed the basis for this exhibition project. It is a laughter that is fun and at the same time undermines all conservatism, morality and avant-garde beliefs. This laughter shows how authority falters, how the pompous gesture and the image of the hero run out of steam.
Ridiculously Yours! flirts with the humour of catastrophe, bad taste, the camp approach, B-movie culture, science fiction and horror, but also with immaturity, idiocy, intuition and, of course, passion – not to mention enthusiasm.
An inspiring amusement park of enthusiastic awkwardness with works by numerous important artists: from Pieter Bruegel the Elder to Alfred Jarry and James Ensor, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, George Grosz and René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico and Sturtevant, Sigmar Polke and Martin Kippenberger, to numerous contemporary positions of contemporary art such as Paul McCarthy, Nicole Eisenman, Fischli & Weiss, Isa Genzken, Pauline Curnier-Jardin, Kiluanji Kia Henda or Ming Wong.
