Galerie Rudolfinum and Museum of Decorative Arts
Prague, Czech Republic

Decadence Now! Visions of Excess
September 30, 2010 – January 2, 2011
Curator: Otto M. Urban

Decadence is a highly relevant subject in contemporary culture, or rather, one which is relevant once more. The apocalyptic sense of ruin and crisis within our civilisation has inspired a heightened interest in the dark side of both the human soul and of the world as such. From the 1970s onwards, one may observe a continuous attempt to address archetypal decadent themes in a wide range of artists, among them Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Nobuyoshi Araki, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Damien Hirst, Zhang Peng, Keith Haring, Andres Serrano, Ivan Pinkava, Jiř. Černický, Gilbert & George, Gottfried Helnwein, Josef Bolf, Jürgen Klauke and others.