With The World Without Us, the Lentos Art Museum in Linz invites visitors to engage in an artistic exploration of time, space, and existence. The exhibition brings together perspectives that leave behind the human image and look into the cosmos of a world in which we ourselves are only a fleeting moment.
The World Without Us questions human self-assurance in the face of a universe beyond our power to control and interpret. The Lentos Art Museum in Linz is exhibiting artistic positions that deal with concepts such as deep time —periods of billions of years in which human existence is little more than a moment—and the feeling of cosmic horror. These concepts revolve around an experience that lies somewhere between fascination and terror: the confrontation with an incomprehensibly vast, indifferent world in which familiar notions of center and meaning are shattered.
The exhibition makes it clear how far the perspective of art can extend beyond anthropocentric narratives. Works in various media—from painting and installations to film sequences—open up spaces in which the perception of time and space is reimagined. Instead of familiar orientation, the focus here is on the dissolution of boundaries: on deep geological time periods, on the incomprehensibility of cosmic dimensions, and on poetic and metaphorical reflections on existence without humans at the center.
At Lentos, The World Without Us thus becomes an invitation to explore the limits of one's own perception and to embark on an experience that is both breathtaking and unsettling—an exhibition that challenges thought and feeling and asks how art can create meaning in the face of the immeasurable.
February 6 to May 10, 2026
