At Carbon 12 in Dubai, The Narrative of Decline presents a group exhibition curated by Bernhard Buhmann, where the central theme is decline in its many aesthetic, political, and personal dimensions. Buhmann, an Austrian painter and sociologist known for his depictions of clowns, fantastical machines, and dreamlike creatures, invites viewers to reflect on how time transforms bodies, objects, and visual languages, gradually diminishing their strength and narrative capacity. The ongoing exhibition showcases a wide range of practices and materials: from figurative painting infused with grotesque elements to sculptural installations that stage deterioration and wear. Many of the works adopt an ambivalent tone, where irony brushes up against melancholy and disorientation, evoking the idea that any form of grandeur can become fragile, unstable-even absurd. Buhmann’s curatorial eye arranges the works into a kind of narrative sequence: a loosely episodic storyline in which light and shadow alternate, reminding visitors that the promise of progress is not immune to collapse. This is not an apocalyptic outcry, but rather a gentle invitation to observe the ruins of the present with sensitivity and irony. The exhibition belongs to a contemporary current that draws visual culture’s attention to themes of ending, decay, the body, and memory. It is a critical path that treats decline not as a sentence, but as an opportunity to reactivate alternative visions, renew aesthetic and political rituals, and at times even question the very form of art itself.
