Millennials are addicted to social media and avocado toast. Gen Z is terminally online and hates parting their hair on the side.
As a society, we can’t get enough of these generational stereotypes and arguing about whether or not they’re true. The same goes for the art world, where these labels help define new trends. And yet, Gen X has slid under the radar of the generational conversation, a fact which perfectly fits their detachment and avoidance of the mainstream. In the meantime, artists born roughly between 1960 and 1980 have become some of the most powerful artists in the world, having reshaped how we view bodies, media, and irony.
This summer, the Deste Foundation in Athens opened “Gen X: Tales from the Forgotten Generation,” a survey of nearly 50 artists born between 1960 and 1980, drawn entirely from the Dakis Joannou Collection. The show explores how economic precarity, a valorization of slacker culture and rejection of ambition, and global events like the Challenger explosion and the fall of the Berlin Wall all shaped Gen X artmaking. The presentation, which is curated by Massimiliano Gioni, artistic director of New York’s New Museum, with Calvin Wang and Taeyi Kim, runs through November 26, 2026.
The artworks here focus on the generation’s defining characteristics, most notably its permanent ironic stance. A David Shrigley sign that hangs at the entrance, for example, announces “Tonight is cancelled” on one side, “Tomorrow is cancelled” on the other. Elsewhere, Urs Fischer’s surreal, hyperreal bronze sculpture of a red balloon tied to the end of a broom evokes Gen Xers’ detached humor toward everyday labor.
Wall labels, meanwhile, use evocative quotes from ’90s media—sources include Nirvana songs and Douglas Coupland’s defining 1991 novel Generation X. The exhibition unites household names—Kara Walker, Vanessa Beecroft, Matthew Barney, and Wolfgang Tillmans—to explore how the demographic made its own moment. We spoke to Massimiliano Gioni, New Museum director and a Gen Xer himself, about the defining factors of Gen X art and how this “forgotten generation” continues to shape contemporary art and culture. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Josie Thaddeus-Johns: What made you want to do an exhibition based on Gen X?
Massimiliano Gioni: The show came from a few simple considerations. First of all, we are witnessing a significant shift of power from the baby boomers to Gen X, who are getting to hold more and more influential positions, and, at the same time, media attention in the past few years has been very focused on Gen Y (Millennials) and Gen Z. Somehow, Gen X has drifted in the background, which is appropriate for an age group that in the United States came to be described as the “Forgotten Generation” because of the prevalence of double-income families, in which kids were often left alone to grow up on their own.
Secondly, we are witnessing many technological revolutions now that are perhaps comparable to the birth of the internet in the 1990s, when Gen X learned to coexist with a dramatic technological change: In times of technological upheaval—like the ones we are living through now—maybe we can learn from the experiences of the members of the Generation X, who were able to navigate a deep historical transformation.
JTJ: What themes did you find in Gen X artists’ works?
MG: Gen X was, almost by definition, a generation that was very skeptical of any generalization and refused to be easily identified and branded. It would be ironic—if not brutally cynical—to try and package them in a cohesive and uniformed identity.
Many different themes emerge from the exhibition. First of all, there is a sense of resilience in the way these artists responded to the seismic shifts of their formative years—from the fallout of 1980s economic booms and recessions to the birth of the 24-hour news cycle and the looming shadows of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. They reacted with a trademark mix of self-deprecation, lowbrow aesthetics, irony, and a healthy disregard for institutional convention.
Additionally, we wanted to highlight several parallel currents through the works. The mutated or uncanny body is a recurring presence in the show. Shaped by the anxieties around health crises and early technological shifts, many artists depicted bodies as decaying avatars, metallic cyborgs, or uncanny mutant creatures. The deconstruction of media images is another important thread in the show. Gen X artists fiercely analyzed and appropriated the tropes of the fashion and media industries, adopting a “slacker” cynicism that simultaneously mocked and exposed the machinery of consumer culture.
JTJ: Many of the artists here have defined the contemporary art moment—they’re at the top of their game. Is there a conflict between understanding these “slacker generation” artists who thrive in the margins and seeing them as the influential figures they are?
MG: There is certainly a wonderful irony there, but it’s a productive one. The “slacker” ethos—that posture of detachment, anti-ambition, or skepticism toward traditional corporate success—was originally a coping mechanism for a generation facing economic uncertainty and a saturated media landscape. That these very artists have gone on to shape the backbone of contemporary art proves that their marginal, countercultural postures possessed an enduring critical power. They didn’t necessarily sell out; rather, the mainstream eventually had to catch up to the vernacular of skepticism and fragmentation that they helped invent.
JTJ: How can we interpret Gen X’s dislike of “selling out” in the context of Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s embrace of commercial vernacular?
MG: Gen X’s suspicion of “selling out” was rooted in an analog era where you could still theoretically imagine an outside—an authentic underground untainted by corporate logic. But then again, it was precisely during the peak years of Gen X, at the beginning of the 1990s, that many of us witnessed the end of the very notion of the underground, as most symbolically represented by the band Nirvana becoming an international phenomenon.
Maybe Gen X was less about remaining outside the system and more a premonition of a completely transformed relationship between opposition and acceptance. Irony was the tool through which Gen X could survive this paradoxical situation of being simultaneously inside and outside the mainstream.
JTJ: Final question: Is Gen X misunderstood?
MG: Because they occupy the space between the loud political and cultural footprints of the boomers and the digital natives of later generations, they are often seen as cynical or apathetic. But what this exhibition tries to show is that what looks like apathy is actually a very acute, complex survival mechanism. It’s in Greece that skepticism was invented: the members of Gen X might be the last inheritors of that tradition, which has taught us the importance of doubt and detachment.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/YUsvGFD
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