Dream Baby Dream

Our childhood home is a place of imagination, safety, and playfulness, but sometimes also of trauma, violence, and fear. It determines who we are, shapes who we become, and influences what we repress. The impulse to create art often emerges when growing up. Many artists draw on early, individual experiences in their works and subsequently renew, expand, or change our view of the world.

The title Dream Baby Dream evocatively reflects this approach by quoting the eponymous song by the influential electro duo Suicide. The American dream that is conjured up in the lyrics is transformed through the song’s gloomy sounds into both a nightmare and a trance-like ray of hope, allowing rebellion and longing, fear and fantasy to merge with each other.

This catalog is devoted to artists whose oeuvre has been fueled by this source of imagination. Their works contain many references to the time of adolescence, presenting this period of life as an artistic inspiration, but also as a metaphor for physical, psychological, and social conflicts. Joined together, they give rise to an atmosphere in which the dark sides of childhood and youth metamorphose into new forms.

Artists: Jean-Marie Appriou, Morton Bartlett, Richard Billingham, Ellen Cantor, Dominick Di Meo, Valie Export, Mike Kelley, Karen Kilimnik, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Veit Laurent Kurz, Paul McCarthy, Berenice Olmedo, Charlemagne Palestine, Wong Ping, Barbara Rossi, Laurie Simmons, Jean-Luc Verna, Raphaela Vogel, Sue Williams.

Text in English and German.