{"id":661923,"date":"2026-10-30T18:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T18:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/661923\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T18:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T18:06:15","slug":"are-there-lessons-to-be-learned-from-gen-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/661923\/","title":{"rendered":"Are There Lessons to Be Learned From Gen X?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This group exhibition foregrounds Gen X artists that lived the shift from analogue to digital in real time, reality show-to-influencer pipeline, hypercapitalist austerity and trad-fascism<\/p>\n

According to Massimiliano Gioni, Calvin Wang and Taeyi Kim, the curators of this group exhibition at Deste Foundation, there\u2019s much to learn from Generation X. The term came to describe people born between the mid-1960s and 1980, following the publication of Canadian writer Douglas Coupland\u2019s 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, which follows twenty-somethings rebelling against the corporatisation of American life. David Shrigley\u2019s Tomorrow is Cancelled (2012), a black octagon- shaped sign with the work\u2019s title crudely scrawled on it, taps into that capitalist dead- end, as does one line from Richard Linklater\u2019s 1990 film, Slackers, quoted in a wall text for Self-Portrait Deceased (Skull) (1998\u20132008), a resin skull by Meyer Vaisman: \u201cEvery single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death\u201d. In lieu of descriptions, works come with wall texts featuring quotes from Gen X books, movies and songs in order to give texture to the show\u2019s generational and predominantly Western purview. In Shrigley\u2019s case, a quote from Coupland\u2019s novel laments an \u2018endless stress of pointless jobs\u2019, a line presaging the \u2018bullshit jobs\u2019 Gen X activist David Graeber described in 2013 (not mentioned here), of work so meaningless it diminishes life. Nearby, Gillian Wearing\u2019s c print of an office worker holding a sign reading \u2018I\u2019m desperate\u2019, from Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say (1992\u201393), epitomises the era in which Gen X came of age, as postwar boom(er) times gave way to recession, political unrest and war. Wall text for the work quoting Run-DMC\u2019s iconic 1984 track It\u2019s like that functions as a witness account, describing record unemployment and \u201cpeople born to die\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"Gillian Wearing, Signs That Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say \u2013 I\u2019m Desperate, 1992\u201393, c-print, 133 \u00d7 93 \u00d7 5 cm. \u00a9 the artist. Courtesy Deste Foundation, Athens<\/p>\n

It all sounds familiar, given the effects of historical capitalism \u2013 racism, nationalism and colonialism \u2013 that have intensified in the twenty-first century. These conditions explain why, per the curatorial statement, artists associated with Gen X have been foregrounded in this show, as a group that lived the shift from analogue to digital in real time, heralding the twenty-four-hour news cycle, reality show-to-influencer pipeline, hypercapitalist austerity and trad-fascism. Soundtracked by A Good Idea, a 1992 alt-rock murder ballad about a man who drowns a woman who \u201cdidn\u2019t seem to mind\u201d, Cheryl Donegan\u2019s lo-fi video HEAD (Versions 1 & 2) (1993) \u2013 showing the artist drinking milk spurting from a green bottle \u2013 is a reminder of the casual trickle-down entitlement governing women\u2019s bodies and the generational struggles against it, given Sonic Youth\u2019s call for liberation from \u201cmale white corporate oppression\u201d in their 1990 track Kool Thing that appears in its accom- panying wall text. Elsewhere, Andra Ursu\u021ba\u2019s Commerce Exterieur Mondial Sentimental (2017) \u2013 a pink marble statue based on a 2011 photograph of a Roma woman awaiting deportation from France \u2013 is paired with a quote by riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna: \u2018When the world only treats you like a dot on a marketing scheme, you can learn to treat yourself and other people like that.\u2019 Visualising that schema on an expanded geopolitical plane is Tom Sachs\u2019s Two Boeing 767s (2001), a bricolage sculpture of two planes invoking 9\/11, and Paul Chan\u2019s charcoal-on-paper drawing of an unkempt Saddam Hussein around the time of his capture, The End (2012), which appears on the cover of On Democracy, a book published in 2012 by Chan\u2019s imprint Badlands Unlimited, of three speeches Hussein delivered before becoming Iraq\u2019s president, framing democracy as patriotic allegiance to a state in revolution. The excerpt accompanying Chan\u2019s drawing, from Jean Baudrillard\u2019s 1991 essay \u2018The Gulf War Did Not Take Place\u2019, feels sharply contemporary, given US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth\u2019s Clavicular-level interest in his soldiers\u2019 looks, not to mention his own, as the United States and Israel continue their illegal incursions into Iran and Palestine: \u2018The war,\u2019 Baudrillard writes, \u2018along with the fake and presumptive warriors, generals, experts and television presenters we see speculating about it all through the day, watches itself in a mirror: am I pretty enough\u2026?\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"Cheryl Donegan, Head (Versions 1 & 2), 1993 (video still). \u00a9 the artist. Courtesy Deste Foundation, Athens<\/p>\n

At times, the exhibition feels like a greatest hits of Deste shows, whether at the foundation\u2019s Athens HQ or its Slaughterhouse project space on Hydra, in homage to founder Dakis Joannou\u2019s longstanding curatorial ethos of doing what he wants albeit with an open invitation. Take Chan\u2019s drawings, which followed the artist\u2019s monthlong stay in Baghdad at the turn of 2003, and appeared in Animal Spirits, a 2012 group show at the Slaughterhouse organised, at the height of the Greek economic crisis, around British economist John Maynard Keynes\u2019s description of \u2018animal spirits\u2019 shaping economic life. This was among Deste\u2019s most overtly political interventions into the Greek political condition, until its vital Slaughterhouse installation by Nari Ward, Until That Day, opened in June 2026 with a performance featuring Afro-Greek trailblazer MC Yinka, connecting Afro-Greek musical traditions with Rebetiko, a migrant genre. Gestures like these position Deste on the flipside of the wall text for Huma Bhabha\u2019s What Should It Be (2024), a painted and patinated bronze figure resting on a concrete pedestal, which quotes British author Zadie Smith\u2019s 2023 essay \u2018The Instrumentalist\u2019, describing the Gen X \u2018art monster\u2019 whose talent justifies abuse. \u2018What\u2019s wrong with these people is that they are going to die, and for the first time in their lives, they really know that,\u2019 Smith writes. \u2018In the curious case of Gen X, we seem to be taking this shocking revelation both personally and collectively, maybe because the end of our time and the end of time itself have become somewhat muddled in our minds. Our backs hurt, the kids don\u2019t like Bach anymore \u2013 and the seas are rising!\u2019 <\/p>\n

\"\"Wolfgang Tillmans, London Installation 1999-2002\/Bernhard Wilhelm, Looking Back, 2001. \u00a9 the artist. Courtesy Deste Foundation, Athens<\/p>\n

Smith questions who\u2019s to blame \u2018for this terrible collision of the apocalypse and our own cultural and physical obsolescence\u2019. Is it the millennials or Gen Z? she asks \u2013 and it\u2019s here that this show\u2019s argument unravels, given the lack of space to consider the ethical contradictions that shape any group. In a 2024 essay not referenced here, Smith drew a false equivalence between calls for Palestinian solidarity and slogans for mass destruction, echoing talking points designed to obscure the realities of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine: a position that ultimately legitimises political indifference as a moral stance. A similar position was expressed by Douglas Gordon \u2013 whose slow pan of a couple kissing, titled Monument for X (1998), opens the show \u2013 in 2011, when he called the artist boycott of the Biennale of Sydney \u2013 over its chairman Luca Belgiorno-Nettis\u2019s role as managing director of longtime biennale sponsor Transfield Holdings, a contractor for Australia\u2019s notorious immigration detention centres \u2013 \u2018irresponsible\u2019, telling The Guardian, \u2018I don\u2019t see any significant change that would have happened if we had all boycotted.\u2019 Seeing as sustained pressure eventually ousted Belgiorno-Nettis and pushed the biennale to cut ties with Transfield, Gordon\u2019s take has aged so badly that it negates this exhibition\u2019s idea that millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha could learn from Gen X as they navigate the ethical demands of the moment \u2013 especially given the place Gordon\u2019s work has in introducing this exhibition\u2019s entire gambit. Lessons run both ways, after all.<\/p>\n

Gen X: Tales from the Forgotten Generation at Deste Foundation, Athens 18 June \u2013 26 November<\/a><\/p>\n

From the October 2026 issue of\u00a0ArtReview\u00a0\u2013\u00a0get your copy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Bailey<\/a>Reviews<\/a>30 October 2026ArtReview<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This group exhibition foregrounds Gen X artists that lived the shift from analogue to digital in real time,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-661923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}