UNBOTHERED?!
September 4, 2026 – October 17, 2026
Stella Winter, Wei Zhu, Lara Weiler, Elisa Deutloff & Chelsea Hartmann
Galerie Greulich
Gen Z—who exactly is this generation, what drives them, and how do they respond to their environment? These questions are annoying, and yet they’re asked over and over again—about themselves and others, from the outside and without really thinking it through. Self-reflection—in the form of “Where do I stand in this world? Where do I belong? And where will I end up?”—is a central theme in art, not just today, but for a long time now. Every generation answers this question anew, and this is where it gets interesting:
UNBOTHERED?! A state of indifference, unfazed by criticism and chaos, drifting nonchalantly through the world—is that really Gen Z’s attitude? The question mark is both a blank space and an attitude in itself. Caught between world-weariness and (digital) overwhelm, Gen Z’s reaction comes across as post-ironic. So it’s never entirely clear how something is to be understood, or what was actually meant. The question mark isn’t followed by an answer, because there isn’t one (yet); instead, it’s followed by an exclamation point. But what does that mean? Is Gen Z trying to warn us or urge us to act, or is it the silent expression of an angry generation that’s fed up with being misunderstood, without anyone ever really listening to them?
This group exhibition offers a glimpse into a generation of female artists who address these questions with a natural ease all their own, without needing to articulate them explicitly. The paintings by Lara Weiler (*1999, Luxembourg), Stella Winter (*1999, Mainz), and Wei Zhus (*1996, China) offer the opportunity to approach this question from a new perspective: engaging with oneself and one’s own environment as a response to a previous generation that knows more about the Queen than about its own ancestors and itself. Their visual worlds offer an honest and intimate glimpse into the lives of a generation that is all too often accused of being too self-absorbed. This focus on the self can be interpreted as a natural reaction—in a world where everything is open to us and everything could be over at any moment.
Elisa Deutloff (b. 1998, Offenbach) and Chelsea Hartmann (b. 1998, Offenbach) step away from the canvas and explore the question of the self in a different, more pressing context: that of digital existence. Their jointly developed video work *chelisea.safetensors* (2026) takes the increasing appropriation of personal image data as its starting point—specifically, those clauses that allow companies to acquire rights to physical appearance and biometric features for the creation of digital replicas. At its core is a specially trained LoRA adapter, unusually trained on two people simultaneously. Through targeted interventions in the training process, the artists render the model commercially unusable—and in doing so develop a strategy of self-empowerment that is as laconic as it is consistent: When one’s own image becomes a resource, how it is handled becomes an artistic stance. The video work is complemented by a large-scale installation that translates the relationship between body, image, and control into physical space.
It is precisely this cultural ambivalence—between detachment and profound sorrow—that runs through all five works—whether painterly or media-based, intimate or critical of the system—without resolution and without an answer. What remains is the pop-cultural exclamation mark.
Contact:
Andreas Greulich
info@galerie-greulich.de