From now until January 9, 2012, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will showcase "Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art from Germany," one of my favorite exhibitions of the year.  The collection is a thoughtful look at the social and cultural responses to a digitized, globalized, and standardized modern era. "Precarious Worlds" tells the story of the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Cold War as Germany reimagines itself in light of a new political landscape. Just as much a history lesson as an art exhibition, guests of the Kemper will get a feel for the German identity in the '90s to the present.

When I went to see "Precarious Worlds," I was amazed by the range of expression within the exhibition. Each work deals with the tension between reality and fantasy with unexpected and unique technique.  Wolfgang Tilmans' photographs, for instance, challenge what we expect from enlarged photography by blowing up a standard-sized image to abstract, dreamy proportions. I really love the artist's approach in making "Silver 71." He creates a photo without a camera, pushing photosensitive paper through a processor to capture the imprints left by dirt and residue in the machine. His work is technically a photo, although it comes off looking more like a painting.

I watched in amusement as a family of five (baby in tow!) approached Corinne Wasmuht's "Llanganuco Falls," a dreamscape of inverted waterfalls and psychedelic pastels. The father turned to his darling, polka-dotted daughters: "What's going on here?" The urbane twelve year old with feathers in her hair spoke up: "For me, some of them look like waterfalls upside down." She hesitated. "I can't really explain what I see. But it's beautiful."

In a lot of ways, the experience of seeing "Precarious Worlds" on Community Day was the perfect rendering of exactly what the artists were getting at: rethinking reality with childlike imagination. I love that children seem to understand the secrets of these pieces with incredible intuition (perhaps more so than their musing parents!) They pick up on the adult issues (the pain of war, feelings of uncertainty, loss) but also celebrate the quiet mystery of the exhibit with sweet, innocent remarks.

"Precarious Worlds" is free and open to the public from September 9, 2011 to January 9, 2012. The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is located on the campus of Washington University. For more information, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmusuem.wustl.edu.

Image caption:  Corinne Wasmuht, Llanganuco Falls, 2008. Oil on wood, 117 1/4 x 153 1/2". Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. University purchase with funds from the David Woods Kemper Memorial Foundation, 2011.