Oil

No other substance will have shaped societies in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as much as oil—countless materials and key technologies, cultural products, ways of life, knowledge, visions, values and emotions, as well as conflicts, injustices, and abysses of our time owe their existence to the energy density and transformability of the ambivalently shimmering “black gold.” Concerns about oil wells running dry are as old as the Petrol Age itself. It is, however, not the finite nature of the resource, but rather the fight against global warming and mountains of plastic waste that is now heralding the dusk of the “Petrol Age.” From a fictional future, the exhibition Oil: Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age (Septmber 4, 2021–January 9, 2022) takes a look back at the petromodernism that has lasted roughly 100 years: What is typical of this time, what is great and beautiful, what is ugly and terrible, and how is all this reflected in art and culture?

Artists: Monira Al Qadiri, Ana Alenso, Yuri Ancarani, Qiu Anxiong, Atelier Van Lieshout, Kader Attia, Uwe Belz, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Klaus Auderer, Alessandro, Balteo-Yazbeck & Media Farzin, Lothar Baumgarten, Jennifer-Jane Bayliss, Wes Bell, Claus Bergen, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ursula Biemann, Vanessa Billy, Brett Bloom, Mark Boulos, Margaret Bourke-White, Bureau d’Études, Edward Burtynsky, Warren Cariou, Christo, Tony Cragg, Walter De Maria, Mark Dion, Gerardo Dottori, Sokari Douglas Camp, Rena Effendi, William Eggleston, Hans Fischerkoesen, Sylvie Fleury, John Gerrard, Christoph Girardet, Claus Goedicke, Tue Greenfort, Carl Grossberg, Monika Grzymala, Robert Gschwantner, Hans Haacke, Ernst Haeckel, Eberhard Havekost, Romuald Hazoumè, John Heartfield, Armin Herrmann, Michael Hirschbichler, Bernhard Hopfengärtner, Murad Ibragimbekov, Aaditi Joshi, Peter  Keetman, Matt Kenyon, Tetsumi Kudo, Ernst Logar, Mark Lombardi, Ellen Karin Mæhlum, Rémy Markowitsch, Ralf Marschalleck, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Paul Michaelis, Kay Michalak & Sven Völker, Richard Misrach, Michael Najjar, Hugo Niebeling, Franz Nolde, Kate Orff, George Osodi, Alex Prager, Alain Resnais,  Oliver Ressler, Martha Rosler, Miguel Rothschild, Ed Ruscha, Shirin Sabahi, Santiago Sierra, Taryn Simon, Andreas Slominski, Robert Smithson, Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, Thomas Struth, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gunhild Vatn, Wolf Vostell, Entang Wiharso, Erwin Wurm, Yutsi.