Against the grain – Generation Z in Art

Museum for a summer

• 

  Emma Sarpaniemi: Self-portrait with yellow friend – Foto in der Ausstellung GEGEN DEN STRICH

• Ohne Titel – Lack, Holz105 x 82 x 40

Curator's tour

140 works by 22 artists
Generation Z refers to the people born in the mid-1990s and 2010 and are also known as digital natives, for example. Striking experiences of this generation were the "Fridays for Future" climate strikes and the coronavirus pandemic. This generation is health and environmentally conscious and does a lot of things digitally and on the move.
Now 22 Generation Z artists are presenting around 140 works at Sacrow Castle. Visitors will encounter expressive works from several disciplines - painting, sculpture and photography. At the heart of the profile work is the self-portrait.

AGAINST THE GRAIN seems to demonstrate one thing above all: Gen Z artists are profilic - profiled in many exciting and positive ways. Despite all the existential stress, all the retreat and autonomous self-assertion in the face of an overpowering digital world, they reflect the identity-forming media and communicative mechanisms of the present.

Expressive colorfulness, radical subjectivity, rough strokes and impulsive style as well as a humorous approach to artistic role models and pictorial traditions are some of the characteristics of the exhibition 'Gegen den Strich'. The featured artists from different backgrounds, graduates of art colleges and academies, belong to a generation for whom classifications according to art movements and nationalities, painting schools and styles only play a subordinate role, who move freely between abstraction and figuration.

Generational classifications often seem artificial and have been rightly criticized because they are primarily based on the social situations of Western industrialized countries and neglect the socio-cultural conditions of young people in the global South, for example. However, the generational concept of sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) has taken on a new relevance with the so-called Generation Z: they are the first to grow up with the internet and have been shaped by it worldwide. The mental worlds of the 'homo digitalis' are becoming more and more similar and are reproducing each other through the increasing use of the same algorithms, cyberspaces, AI and robotics. This development has long since affected and influenced the arts and art theory, where analog art practices and techniques now appear in a new light. We can therefore also see the exhibited works as evidence of a new resilience and resistance to a world of digital imagery and media appropriation.
The exhibition is curated by Dr. Dietmar Peikert and Michael M. Thoss.

Artists
Emma Sarpaniemi - Photography (Helsinki)
Alexander Basil - Painting (Berlin)
Kensise Anders - Photography & Fabric Paintings (Vienna)
Gustav Sonntag - Painting (Dresden)
Lili Marie Theilen - Painting (Frankfurt/Main)
Lilli Moors - film installation (Berlin)
Malwine Stauss - Ceramics & Painting (Berlin/Leipzig)
Lunita July Dorn - Painting (Berlin)
Kiriakos Tompolidis - Painting (Berlin)
Eileen Helm - Painting (Berlin)
Shanee Roe - Painting (Tel Aviv / Berlin)
Maja Behrmann - Sculpture (Leipzig)
Emilia Auersperg - Photography & Painting (London, UK)
Max Grote - Painting (Berlin)
Olasunkanmi Akomolehin - Painting (Lagos)
Elisa Breyer - Painting (Berlin)
Eileen Alamarales Noy - Photography & Performance (Camagüey/Halle)
Juno Rothaug - Painting (Hamburg)
Minh Phong Ngyuen - Painting (Vienna)
Katharina Stadler - Painting (Düsseldorf / Essen)
Sonya Rychkova - Painting (Offenbach)
Etsu Egami - Painting (Tokyo / New York)

Please send reservations and ticket orders to

Translated with DeepL

Meeting point: Sacrow Castle

Price info: Guided tour included in the admission price.

Please register at

Price: €8.00

Reduced price: €5.00