Austrian cartoonist Manfred Deix (born 1949, St. Pölten, Austria; died 2016, Klosterneuburg, Austria) created wonderfully inappropriate caricatures of taboo sex acts, scatological incidents, and ridiculous politicians including the far-right figure Jörg Haider, who Deix depicted repeatedly. His work is so central to what several sources have called the “Austrian soul” that the term Deixfigur (“Deix Figure”) was added to an Austrian German dictionary. Deix’s figures are physically sturdy and in many cases the antithesis of conventional beauty standards. They often appear in duos or groups, allowing characters to play off one another in outrageous situations, such as a reclining man holding a knife to the throat of the dental hygienist probing his mouth.

Deix designed the façade for a concept formulated by André Heller and Walter Navratil. Absurd scenes play out on the exterior archway: a bent-over man’s fart sends a woman’s hair flying; the mouthpiece of a saxophone is inserted into a man’s anus; and a woman’s wind threatens to blow out candles on two men’s heads. Palace of the Winds extends Deix’s inquiry into mixing the banal with the grotesque in order to make visitors laugh with glee and discomfort. Inside, specialist performers farted into microphones accompanied by classical music before a live audience.