Digital Nights is not only the title of the exhibition, but also the name of a band project by Marc Bijl. In this exhibition, the titles of pop hits from the legendary year 1984 are shown in Marc Bijls typical painterly manner.

It is an exhibition that attempts to weave a humorous thread between the real year 1984, the Orwellian 1984 that tells a horrific dystopian fiction and the young year 2021 that sees reality half as if in a drug frenzy or even already slightly awakening from a coma, not sure itself whether to laugh joyfully or scream in panic or even both?

The fantasies of the future in 1984, when Marc Bijl was 14 years old, were determined by the Cold War, by a worldwide tension, but he states that at least the soundtrack to this dystopia was great. Marc Bijls installations seem like fantasy in a time without a problem, celebrating pleasure grotesques, but unexpectedly they turn this fantasy into a realism that makes even the cardboard replica of a De Lorean (Kindl Brewery 2020 "How beautiful you are") from the future seem like a prophet from the year 2084.

Marc Bijl extracts simple "warning signals" from complex social phenomena and confronts worldwide problems with simple and brute barricades from pop culture.

Effectiveness does not seem to be the goal except for an immense joy in dancing on the volcano. Cultural performances are aggression suppression, said the man from Berggasse, so if fear is a fantasy, then on to reality with joy and dance. His work sometimes shows us just a word or a feeling of rebellion, a romantic idea that the counterculture is more exciting than the mainstream.

Art or law, the choice is easy for the outlaws of pop culture, with a grin on their face for art!