Anti Heroes presents a selection from the Jakob Collection and makes its central concern visible: collecting and presenting contemporary art beyond art-historical systems, classifications, and market-driven logics. Lukas Jakob understands his collection as a reflection of a contemporary attitude toward life and as an invitation to explore contemporary art through personal approaches and shared questions. The anti-hero functions as a unifying principle between artists, the collection, and the audience. The focus is on works that forgo heroic narratives and grand gestures, instead foregrounding doubt, vulnerability, contradiction, and fragile failure. Inspired by reflections on post-heroic heroism, including those by Ulrich Bröckling, the exhibition asks what forms of orientation art can offer today in a world shaped by crises, acceleration, uncertainty, and the rise of authoritarian forces. A conceptual reference point is Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian. The protagonist does not resist her environment through strength or decisive action, but through withdrawal and refusal. This anti-heroic moment unfolds in the exhibition across five thematic chapters, complemented by an archive and mediation space with an Anti-Heroes Library, as well as a concluding prologue.

The exhibition brings together works by Joschua Yesni Arnaut, Fabio Baroli, Miriam Cahn, Boris De Beijer, Neckar Doll, Natacha Donzé, Marina Faust, Evgenij Gottfried, Jasmine Gregory, Katharina Grosse, Constantin Hartenstein, Roni Horn, Rindon Johnson, Aneta Kajzer, Julian-Jakob Kneer, Schirin Kretschmann, Erica Lambertson, Thomas Liu Le Lann, Annette Merkenthaler, Lucas Muñoz Muñoz, Michael Sailstorfer, Tobias Spichtig, Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Raphaela Vogel, Jaime Welsh, and Karla Zipfel. The majority of the works come from the Jakob Collection and are supplemented by a small number of loans. Between self-staging and failure, power and powerlessness, visibility and withdrawal, an ensemble of exhausted, contradictory, and vulnerable positions unfolds. Meaning emerges here where classical heroic figures fail and, within the anti-heroic, new forms of proximity, insight, and responsibility become possible.

In two rooms of the exhibition, Grischa Hyazinth Kaczmarek presents an independent group of works created during his time as an ESSLINGER BAHNWÄRTER scholarship holder. In these works, he explores gender, masculinity and social role expectations, often with references to everyday and pop culture.