Chul-Hyun Ahn
11 September 2010 – 16 January 2011
Caprice Horn Galerie
www.capricehorn.com

Chul-Hyun Ahn utilizes light, color, and special illusion to create the impression of infinite space. The Korean artist’s electrically charged abstract sculptures are made from plywood, cast concrete, cinder block, mirrors and lights. They look like radiantly colored and invigorating astrological marvels. The results appear like portals into alternative universes. They zap us straight into his personal, imaginative, world.

Johannes Albers
2 November 2010 – 12 March 2011
Galerie Haas & Fuchs
www.haasundfuchs.de

Albers transforms recently anachronistic technology in art demonstrating the shifts in our consciousness and priorities. The German conceptual artist touches on our personal nostalgia for objects including digital clocks, binders of paper data and cassette tapes that were once the height of high-tech and now are banal or outmoded. These objects are evidence of conflicted our hope in the future and longing for the past.

Per Dybvig: Around the House or in the Bar, at least
12 November 2010 – 29 January 2011
Galleri Opdahl
www.galerieopdahl.de

For his second solo show in Berlin, Norwegian artist Per Dybvig presents a series of large narrative drawings depicting a world of chaos and fighting furry creatures. In contrast to these fantasy scenes, Dybvig also sketches scholars attentively listening to lectures or captures random passerbys on the street while he is walking through the city. His impressions as a flâneur offer a captivating counterpoint to his imagined dramas.

Out of Joint: Jamie Isenstein, Thomas Kratz, Gabriel Kuri, Michele Di
Menna, Pavel Pepperstein, Francis Upritchard, Iori Wallace and
Maximilian Zentz Zlomovitz
13 November 2010 – 15 January 2011
Galerie Kamm
Berlin
www.galeriekamm.de

The banal objects and familiar imagery represented in “Out of Joint” is tweaked and troubled enough to question our assumptions about the stability of our surroundings. Colors are overtly bright. Materials make no immediate sense. Scale is skewed. And Jamie Isenstein’s lovely watercolor drawing “Granddaughter Clock” is a gentle reminder that certain objects fade from familiarity, becoming uncanny emblems of lost times.

You are kindly invited to attend: Boris Cvjetanovic, Mangelos, Vlado
Martek, Dalibor Martinis, Mladen Stilinovic, Goran Trbuljak, Josip
Vaništa
12 November 2010 – 29 January 2011
Aanant & Zoo
www.aanantzoo.com

Andy Warhol famously pronounced that he’d attend the opening of a can. He would therefore have loved “You are kindly invited to attend.” The exhibition was based on a 1962 Dada-ist prank by Zagreb Josip Vaništa, the head of Gorgona Group, when he sent an invitation to fifty addresses culled from the address book of Studio G. It was only an invite, with no information on the actual event. It was an invitation to Nothing but probably nice to receive anyway. The group show at Aanant & Zoo however is an actual exhibition of work addressing the compelling issue of what constitutes a non-event.

Wang Chu: No construction without destruction – The resurrection of
Chinese painting from the ruins of Postmodern art production
3 December 2010 – 10 February 2011
Galerie Ling
Berlin
www.galerie-ling.de

Chinese-born and German-based painter Wang Chu is clearly aware that the burst of interest in Chinese art has passed. A few years ago, there was a Chinese art bubble and critics were breathless about the bright future for the region. Now, most news stories center on counterfeit paintings being produced by local artists eager to grab the tailend of the trend. Chu’s work is an international mask-up of Eastern and Western references and the exhibition’s title is a clever play on the fickle nature of postmodern fashions.

Without a trace: Benoît Broisat, Cyrill Lachauer, Gabriel Rossell Santillán
14 January – 19 February 2011
Galerie Jette Rudolph
Berlin
www.jette-rudolph.de

The base for this thoughtful and thought-provoking joint show is Derrida’s surprisingly lucid assertion: ““Nothing, either in the elements or in the system, is anywhere simply present or absent. There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of traces.” The three international participating artists question whether the object or its “traces” (its imagery, symbolism and pictorial replication) carries greater significance in reality. They pit image against object with unexpected results.

Dave McDermott: The Modern Temper
21 January – 4 March 2011
DUVE Berlin
www.duveberlin.com

Californian artist Dave McDermott’s surreal collages have an uncanny, haunting quality. Their delicate beauty, highlighted with opulent touches, has an anachronistic allure. They recall Hannah Hoch’s Dada-ish photomontages deconstructing beauty ideals through surreal juxtapositions. Yet added to his nudes and floral montages, McDermott also hacks and unmoors images of iconic artists and figures of creative authority. He adds levity to these historical portraits with dream-like imagery that Picasso and his other subjects would surely appreciate.

Dirk Stewen
21 January – 24 February 2011
Gerhardsen Gerner
Berlin
www.gerhardsengerner.com

Dirk Stewen’s ethereal watercolors have a tender dream-like grace mitigating their underling oddness. The Hamburg-based artist’s abstract works and Dada-esque installations share the same delicate balance between lyrical beauty and bizarreness. Drips, frays, tendrils and threads dangling from his canvases, potato starch paper and ink, cotton and confetti on photo paper collages create a sense that his hypnagogic works leak their loveliness into our reality.

Markus Selg: Searching for Ruwenzori
22 January – 5 March 2011
Galerie Guido W. Baudach
Berlin
www.guidowbaudach.com

Selg combines sci-fi imagery with classical concerns. His interest in philosophical icons such as Wagner and ancient Babylonian, Biblical and Egyptian traditions tie together his disparate aesthetic roots. The Berlin-based multi-media artist creates varied installations incorporating his sculptures, films and paintings interwoven by his conceptual investigations into his source material.