Eccentricity demands courage and intellectual freedom. It can be humorous, touching or disturbing. Under the title ‘Eccentric’ and through the positions of 50 international artists, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich will explore a special ‘Aesthetics of Freedom’ from 25 October to 27 April 2025. The list of participants ranges from Yael Bartana, Joseph Beuys and John Bock, Maurizio Cattelan, Judy Chicago, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst to Sylvie Fleury, Isa Genzken, Paul McCarthy, Paola Pivi, Pipilotti Rist and Santiago Sierra – to name but a few. Eccentricity, it is said, rejects any ideology and is therefore ‘a social motor for freedom and tolerance’. The basic idea: eccentricity is an ideology-critical intellectual attitude, based on freedom of thought and creation, which stands for the freedom of democracy and humanism. This freedom also releases energies ‘of transformative power’. It does not move within the hierarchical, autocratic and binary structures of ‘either/or’, but ‘within the networked and non-binary structures of ‘both/and’.

Around 100 works of painting, sculpture, installation, video and design take aim at rigid norms and hackneyed clichés. Diversity is celebrated and the perspective of ‘ex centro’, the view from outside a fictional centre, is adopted. Not only do the artists experiment with a wide variety of materials and techniques, they also view and process their motifs and subjects from the most surprising angles, distorting, deforming or liquefying figures and forms or combining them into hybrid or amorphous compositions. 

The exhibition, curated by Eva Karcher and Bernhart Schwenk, focuses on contemporary visual art, but also includes individual works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries as historical reference points. In addition, design objects extend the spectrum of the eccentric. In short, ‘Eccentric. Aesthetics of Freedom’ aims to celebrate the diversity and complexity of fundamental aspects of human existence such as the body, identity, beauty and the environment. The exhibition is divided into five chapters: ‘Creatures’ shows the diversity of individual beings whose ambivalent charisma appears fragile and vulnerable, yet confidently asserts their own sphere of influence. ‘Exalted Cosmos’ is about the space that eccentric artistic personalities create for themselves. ‘Transformative Technology’ focuses on the creative, boundary-pushing use of technology and materials. Finally, ‘Hybrid Beauty’ and ‘Fluid Bodies’ visualise the ‘extraordinary concept of beauty as well as the mutability and self-image of the physical’.

A comprehensive publication in German and English by Hirmer Verlag will accompany the exhibition, with essays by the curators, texts on the artists and their works with statements and images of the works. Panel discussions and performances will take place during the exhibition.