13.03—10.05.2026
start at 18:00
end at 18:00
Curator: 𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧́𝐬𝐤𝐚-𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐬𝐳𝐭𝐤𝐚
Where: Galeria OP ENHEIM, Plac Solny 4, WrocławExhibition dates: 13.03-10.05.2026
The exhibition Unruhe takes as its point of departure Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, whose modernist vision of the future, at the moment of its premiere, functioned as a projection of twentieth-century anxieties. Lang set his film in the year 2026, portraying a world entirely subordinated to mechanisation, rigid labour hierarchies, structures of power and the radical alienation of the individual. Today, as this date is no longer a futuristic horizon, the director’s silent-film phantasm returns as a reference to experiences that are real and present.
The exhibition juxtaposes Metropolis with a sense of anxiety that is no longer a speculative anticipation of crisis or a hypothetical warning construct, but rather an experience materially inscribed in the everyday functioning of individuals and communities. It is an existential state that does not emerge at a singular point, but unfolds durationally, becoming the backdrop for thinking, acting and feeling. The eponymous Unruhe – a German term denoting restlessness, non-rest and a state of permanent imbalance – does not signify a transient tension or emotional response. Instead, it describes the temporal condition in which we live, where respite becomes increasingly unattainable while alertness and tension assume the status of normative experience. In this sense, Unruhe names the experience of living an accelerated life and the tyranny of possibilities. Significantly, the German word Unruh, referring to the balance wheel that regulates the passage of time in a clock, also resonates within this narrative. Its incessant movement establishes the rhythmic structure of the exhibition, composed of iterative artistic gestures that draw upon unsettling formal structures, natural raw materials and symbolically framed rituals.
