BEST OF BERLIN’S GALLERY WEEKEND:
From 29 April – 1 May, Berlin’s top galleries strut for the delight of locals and visitors from the roving art circuit. Here are our most anticipated top ten shows, from the forty-four featured galleries hosting openings during Berlin Gallery Weekend.
GILBERT & GEORGE
“The Urethra Postcard Art of Gilbert & George”
30 April – 04 June 2011
ARNDT
Potsdamer Straße 96
10785 Berlin
+49.30.20 613870
arndtberlin.com
Pictures postcards today are as endearingly anachronistic or subversively fresh as two gentlemen in dapper suits sipping tea. The 564 new postcard pieces on display at Arndt are classic examples of Gilbert & George’s dark wit and the medium’s forgotten charms. Gilbert & George’s sharp satire and playful scatological references are as quintessentially British as the Union Jack, red phone-boxes and images of the Royal Family sprinkled throughout their oeuvre. Yet their naughty sensibility, sexiness and approachable attitudes also make them ideal weekend representatives of Berlin’s gallery scene.
ROSA BARBA
30 April – 04 June 2011
carlier | gebauer
Markgrafenstraße 67
D-10969 Berlin
+49 (0)30 2400 863-0
carliergebauer.com
Rosa Barba is fascinated by cinema’s ability to captivate audiences. The Italian-born artist creates installations, sculptures, writing and films devoted to investigating our bewitchment with the medium of film. Barba does not view film merely as a tool to project movies. She is also interested in film’s slippery, shimmering physicality. Her installations explore the immediate, tactical allure of film and the mesmerizing stories and images that it contains.
Øystein Aasan
30 April – 4 June 2011
PSM
Strassburger Strasse 6-8
10405 Berlin
+49 (0) 178 78 55 167
psm-gallery.com
At PSM, Norwegian artist Øystein Aasan invites viewers into his studio. Instead of staging studio visits outside the exhibition, he recreates his studio in the gallery. By simulating the intimacy of seeing art in its birthplace, Aasan questions assumptions about art’s natural habitat. Is the studio art’s womb? Is a collector’s wall art’s grave? Are galleries and museums the main locations were art really lives? Does art only exist like a cut flower once it leaves the artist’s personal creative space? Aasan makes these concerns central to his own on-going intellectual and artistic practice.
MARK TOBEY
“Selected Works 1944-1970″
April 29 – July 30, 2011
Moeller Fine Art
Tempelhofer Ufer 11
D-10963 Berlin
+ 49 (30) 252 940 83
moellerfineart.com
Know as a leading “mystical painters of the Northwest,” Mark Tobey’s frenetic abstract paintings are full of energy. Toby, who was born a devout Congregationalist in Wisconsin at the turn of the last century, retained an avid interest in Eastern religion and philosophy until his death in 1976. His paintings express his fascination with form, harmony, language and movement. He had a significant impact on later generations of abstract artists. This museum-quality retrospect demonstrates his career’s beauty and intellectual depth.
MARKUS OEHLEN
April 29–June 2011
Gerhardsen Gerner
Holzmarktstr. 15–18
S-Bahnbogen 46
10179 Berlin-Mitte, Germany
+49 (0) 30 695 183 41
An original punk, Markus Oehlen’s first solo show demonstrates his paintings’ gentle poetic charm. Oehlen became a professor at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts after he founded the bands Charley’s Girls and Fehlfarben und Mittagspause in Düsseldorf. In contrast to the music that he played in the late seventies and early eighties, his paintings are soft-focused pastiches created through silkscreen, photocopying and linoleum printing. They are dreamy and delicate yet his acid palette still clashes with punk-rock energy.
CADY NOLAND / SANTIAGO SIERRA
“General Strike”
30 April – 29 July 2011
Koch Oberhuber Wolff
Brunnenstrasse 9
+49 (0)30 311 66 770
kow-berlin.com
Cady Noland and Santiago Sierra are not mere agent provocateurs. Their disarming art challenges international power dynamics and questions the distribution of privilege. The content of their collaboration remains a surprise but the pairing of these artists assures that the exhibition will question issues far beyond the gallery.
GABRIEL KURI
“carbon index compost copy”
April 29 – June 1, 2011
Esther Schipper
Schöneberger Ufer 65
D-10785 Berlin
+49 (0) 30 37 44 33 133
estherschipper.com
Gabriel Kuri investigates issues of class, consumerism, temporality, economic barriers and cultural identity in his installations and drawings. He gathers every-day ephemera and arranges telling, theatrical, scenes that represent fundamental sociological observations. Born in Mexico City, educated in London, based in Belgium and exhibiting in Berlin, Kuri offers a range of insights into the tensions and potential of contentious multi-cultural communities.
I AM NOT FREE BECAUSE I CAN BE EXPLODED ANYTIME
Robert Morris, Rosemarie Trockel, Jenny Holzer and Lady Pink
Curated by Sterling Ruby
Spruth Magers Berlin
08 April 08 – 28 May 2011
Oranienburger Str. 18
10178 Berlin
+49 (0) 30 28884030
spruethmagers.com
Sterling Ruby augments his solo-show of new metal, bronze, ceramic, fiber, urethane and formica sculptures with a selection of work by four artists who inspire his aesthetic and conceptual concerns. Robert Morris, Rosemarie Trockel, Jenny Holzer and Lady Pink represent the disparate range of references evoked in Ruby’s work. Ruby’s title for the exhibition he’s curated origins from a 1983 collaborative Jenny Holzer/ Lady Pink painting. Looking beyond the thrilling fact of a historic pairing between iconic female artists, Ruby investigates the implications of the painting’s text in relation to America’s ideals and reality of freedom, expression and fear.
BORIS MIKHAILOV
“Tea Coffee Cappuccino”
30 April – June 18, 2011
Galerie Barbara Weiss
Zimmerstrasse 88-91
10117 Berlin
+49 (0) 30 262 42 84
galeriebarbaraweiss.de
Boris Mikhailov’s harrowing portraits of ultimate devastation and abjection in his native Ukraine have a disarming humor interwoven with real misery. The people he intimately and empathetically photographs are often laughing drunkenly while embodying the ravishes of poverty and social neglect. His work articulates a universal state of hardship but specifically exposes the plight of people abandoned by the Soviet dream of security.
HELEN MARTEN
“Take a stick and make it sharp”
30 April – 04 June 2011
Johann König, Berlin
Dessauer Straße 6-7
10963 Berlin
+49 (0) 30 2610 308-0
johannkoenig.de
Helen Marten’s witty and weird sculptures peel apart contemporary conventions. She humorously examines expressions of loneliness, ownership, need, power and miscommunication. She uses cell-phones, cats and hip-hop references to create a playful but poignant portrait of timeless cravings and personal concerns.
