The Simple Life

Today in the West, the awareness of the existential necessity of sustainable action in the face of the many different environmental problems and the socio-economic crisis is tightly interwoven with the hedonistic longing for a "good life." By means of "intelligent" consumption, our bodies and minds are to be kept energetic, and at the same time the environment is to be cared for—a claim in which ethics and consumption, aesthetics and sustainability do not exclude each other. Individual attempts at politicized everyday practices and a lifestyle geared to a complex concept of "sustainability" are oriented toward the most various medially disseminated offers, insights and convictions. A popular desire in this discourse aims at the return to "simplicity" and "closeness to nature" with which the denaturalization and over-complexity of the lifeworld is to be countered. This appetite is accompanied by ideas of using recycled products, of deceleration and a general reduction to what seems "essential," sometimes joined by the longing for a re-enchantment of the world. The exhibition The Simple Life presents works that from various perspectives address the yearning for modes of lifestyles considering sustainability and naturalness as well as their aporias, and in which the role of "art" itself is reflected.

The Simple Life

Künstler: Angela Bulloch, Josephine Meckseper, Shana Moulton, Simon Starling, Fabian Reimann, Niko Wolf.