In The Happy Deppy Ecstasy Institute, her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, Zuzanna Czebatul (born 1986 in Międzyrzecz, Poland) poses questions about power, its symbolic embodiment, and how power relations structure our social reality. For Kunstpalais, the Berlin-based sculptor not only produces new sculptures, but also creates an extensive artistic spatial program that can be read as a parody of real-life end-time spectacles. Mighty gas pipelines, man-sized towers made of body armor, or a pirated copy of a part of the Louvre facade reflect Czebatul's fascination with geopolitical themes and monolithic forms. In her exhibition the overlapping discourses on claims to power and claims of interpretations resemble a signature of our time.

For all their aesthetic force, Czebatul's works are primarily concerned with aspects of our mode of production and life that are readily repressed. Against the horizon of current political, economic, and ecological crises, she draws on the strategies of a polyphonic, emancipatory counterculture, without succumbing to the temptation of moral finality. In times when the statues of colonizers are being razed and imperial castles are being reconstructed at the same time, her works represent witty anti-monuments – memorials to an ideology-free society yet to be built.

Image: Zuzanna Czebatul, (from left to right) Probably a Robbery, 2021, polystyrene, acrylic plaster, pigments, wood, metal, 315 x 195 x 88 cm; Time Cloud I – V, 2021, oil on canvas, each 200 x 150 cm; Godspeed (Start) & Godspeed (Stop), 2021, polystyrene, synthetic resin varnish, polyvinyl chloride, metal, dimensions variable, Courtesy the artist, photo: Ludger Paffrath