Sergio Prego: Black Monday
Until 11 April
Buchman Galerie
Charlottenstrasse 13
T: +49 30 2589 9929
www.buchmanngalerie.com
New York-based Sergio Prego shows photos at irregular intervals creating stop motion video sequences in which time is out of whack. The effect is like a fight scene out of the Matrix. In ‘Black Monday’ the smoke plume seen growing from the floor of a large warehouse space seems to be moving predictably; it’s the seconds and minutes that have run amok. The artist goes out of his way to show the strings being pulled; Prego’s minimalism, however, is transcendent.
Laura Horelli
Until 21 April
Galerie Barbara Weiss
Zimmerstrasse 88-91
T: +49 (0)30 262 42 84
www.galeriebarbaraweiss.de
Laura Horelli uses the format of video documentary as a starting point to toy with the expectations we’ve developed around consuming stories. In her newest video, on display at Barbera Weiss, the young artist attempting to make a work about artificial snow is played by two women, neither of whom is Horelli.
Birgit Schlieps: Trancemoderne
Until 19 May
Galerie Zwinger
Gipstrasse 3
T: +49 (0)30 28 59 89 07
www.galerie-zwinger.de
Blurring a rather different line between art and documentary is Brigit Schlieps’s ‘Trancemoderne’ project, on display at Zwinger galerie. Her ongoing invesitgation of Aktau, a city constructed to house Khazk nomads and Russian workers at the height of Soviet Modernism is quite serious. Large-scale photographic prints, framed snapshots, drawings, digitally printed wallpaper, and a small carefully folded postcard image are on display.
Fancesco Clemente: Atlantic Avenue Paintings
Until 19 May
Jablonka Gallery
Kochstrasse 60
T: +49 (0)30 212 36 890
www.jablonkagalerie.com
Now in the fourth decade of his career, Italian Francesco Clemente’s painting is undeniably honed. The ‘Atlantic Avenue’ series, on display for the first time at Jablonka gallery, brings to mind the work of Max Beckmann, at least stylistically. Clemente’s use of iconography, however, seems more bent on sending viewers on subjective trips than on exploring the collective unconscious.
Anne Mie van Kerckhoven: Uber das ICH, Oh the sick Lady, Ah the sick Lady (explodes from within)
Until 28 April
Daadgalerie
Zimmerstrasse 90-91
www.daadgalerie.de
Belgian artist Anne Mie van Kerckhoven shows the work done over the period of her residency in Berlin (courtesy of, and at, the DAAD galerie). The work clusters loosely around the theme of negotiation between the figure and its environment. Including scores of sketches, two videos and some fantastic collages riffing off books’ frontispieces, the show makes the artist’s punk rock influences apparent and promises ‘a lot of fun’, which indeed it delivers. Kerckhoven’s work is also on display at the gallery, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Dirckenstrasse 41, which represents the artist in Germany.
Knut Eckstein: Back in ten minutes
Until 30 April
Klara Wallner PLUS
185 Brunnenstrasse
T: +49 (0)30 3223670
www.klarawallner.de
Knut Eckstein is known for his urban interventions in cardboard, which, the artist proposes, ‘suggest an undertaking which is both provisional and hypothetical’. In this latest show, Klara Wallner’s Brunnenstrasse outpost has been closed, due to an ‘art explosion’, which has reduced the exhibit to a view three feet into the boarded up gallery. Most fascinating is the similarity between the installation chez Wallner and the window display at the apartment block next door advertising itself as an ‘Anticapitalist world’. Whose is the facsimile? One wonders if Mr Eckstein has a position.
Thomas Struth
Until 24 April
Galerie Max Hetzler
Zimmerstrasse 90-91
T: +49 30 229 24 37
www.maxhetzler.com
Another brilliant site-specific choice has been made at Max Hetzler gallery, where Thomas Struth’s majestic ‘Prado’ series is on display. The exhibit has been extended through the entire space, including rooms that are normally closed off to the public. This latest installement of Struth’s ongoing series of museum photographs – schoolkids, tour groups, baby carriages in front of the crowd in ‘Las Meninas’ – is reliably interesting. Seeing Hetzler’s staff typing away in front of them is an interesting surprise.
Marc Brandenburg: Underground
Until 30 June
Neue Gesellschaft für bildende
Kunst e.V Oranienstraße 25
T: +49 (0)30 616 513 0
www.ngbk.de
The billboards at Alexanderplatz’s U2 stop have been replaced by black and white canvases courtesy of the New Society for Fine Art (NGBK). The drawings of city life and of the May Day protests evoke x-ray images or CCTV footage. Decide for yourself whether they work to raise hackles about the current level of surveillance of public space or to normalise it.
Michal Budny: Silence
Until 14 April
Johnen Galerie
Schillingstr. 31
T: +49 (0)30 27 58 30 30
www.johnengalerie.de
More cardboard at Johnen Galerie. Young Polish artist Michal Budny has hung a massive, unpainted cube about a meter and a half from the floor, filling the entire gallery space. Far from frosty in its conceptualism, the piece has an oddly warm persona, crouching from the ceiling like a large, silent cat.
Thorsten Brinkmann: Tisch zi bang
Until 29 April
Kunstagenten
Linienstrasse 155
T: +49 (0) 30 6950 4142
www.kunstagenten.de
Contemporary surrealist Thorsten Brinkmann’s multi-medium show at Kunstagenten is a blast. Brinkmann plays between the weight of art history and the joy of creating work out of anything he can get his hands on. The artist appears in most of his pieces, either as a clad head in the photographic self-portraits, or as legs poking out from underneath his objets-trouves. Brinkmann has been shortlisted for the Schering award for photography, and his work is also on display at the Berlinische Galerie until 9 April.
