Installation view of 'Private/Corporate'
Private/Corporate
Until 21 September
Daimler Contemporary - Haus Huth
Alte Potsdamer Strasse 5
www.collection.daimler.com
'Auseinandersetzung' - serious candidate for all-time favorite term of German intellectuals and would-be ones - denotes a debate, dialogue, or back-and-forth of ideas. Such is the goal of the series of annual exhibitions organized by the Daimler Art Collection, which shows work from collections alongside the corporate foundation's own. Now in its fifth year, this installment brings work under the rubric of "Minimal" (rather, perhaps, than "Minimalism") from the Hamburg-based Lafrenz collection to Daimler's space in Berlin. Artists straddling the divide include Liam Gillick, Sol LeWitt and David Novros.
Ronald de Bloeme
Ronald de Bloeme
Until 13 October
Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art, Photography, and Architecture
Alte Jakobstrasse 124-128
www.berlinischegalerie.de
Dutch-born De Bloeme is the first non-German to win the country's Vattenfall Contemporary Painting Award, for his zippy lateral abstractions - on view this summer at the Berlinische Galerie.
Still from 'Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait' by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno
Douglas Gordon/ Philippe Parreno - Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
Until 9 August
DAAD Galerie
Zimmerstrasse 89-90
www.daad-berlin.de
Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's 2006 'portrait' of soccer great Zinadine Zidane continues to captivate. Along with Anri Sala's 'La Mano di Dio' (2008) and the group exhibition 'Bread and Soccer' at New York's Austrian Cultural forum this summer, it signals perhaps that it's time for some serious analysis of recent football-related art.
Mai-Thu Perret
Mai-Thu Perret: Bikini
Until 26 July
Galerie Barbara Weiss
Zimmerstrasse
www.galeriebarbaraweiss.de
Among the young artists taking 20th-century modernist movements in their own endearing and wonky directions, New York schooled Mai-Thu Perret riffs on the bikini: apparently the swimwear avant-garde was inspired by the first post-war test of the atom bomb. Also included in the show are small black and white prints reminiscent of Moholy-Nagy's experiments in photography, made - on closer inspection - with architectural drafting tools and spray paint.
Richard Long
Richard Long
Until 9 September
Haunch of Venison
Heidestrasse 46
www.haunchofvenison.com
British land artist Richard Long shows two 'large semi circular works' made of local stone on the floor of Haunch of Venison's project space, and 'a drawing in Avon mud' on the wall. His 'Berlin Slate Circle' (1996) is currently on display down the block at the Hamburger Bahnhof.
David Levine
David Levine: The Gallery Will Be Relocating Over the Summer
Open and shut 27 June (start: 8 pm)
Curators Without Borders
Brunnenstrasse 5
www.curatorswithoutborders.com
David Levine is an actor posing as an artist posing as a director based in Berlin. His practice is hard to categorize, but its likeliest muse would be Douglas Gordon's self-portrait as Kurt Cobain as Andy Warhol as Myra Hindley as Marilyn Monroe. His last work, 'Bauerntheater', cast an actor as a (echt) farmer; his next involves theater students who will pretend to be actors pretending to be artists, gallery goers, critics and a curator. The opening will be closed, but visible, to the public.
Lea Rochus and Bernadette Blendl, 'Doener', 2007
... We Are Ugly But We Have the Music ...
27 June - 23 August
Galerie Michael Janssen
Kochstrasse 60
www.galeriemichaeljanssen.de
In deference to grand academic traditions, this summer Galerie Michael Janessen will be given over to the work of the students of "Mulheimer Frieheit" artist Walter Dahn, himself a one-time master student of Joseph Beuys, and one-time teacher of Antje Schiffers, Tomas Arnolds, Gert and Uwe Tobias, und so weiter.
Paulina Olowska
Collaged Stryjenska
Curated by Paulina Olowska
Until 30 June
Schinkel Pavillon
Oberwallstrasse 1
10117 Berlin-Mitte
www.schinkelpavillon.de
The fifth Berlin Biennial's last exhibition ends with the month of June: Paulina Olowska (b. 1976, Gdansk) has mounted original oils by Zofia Stryjenska, lost maverick of the Polish avant garde, alongside her own vast black and white paintings based on the former. The overlapping canvases, arranged in an orthogonal grid, create a "collaged" effect when seen from the entrance. The exhibition design, including the painted floor, reference the Polish Pavilion at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs, for which Stryjenska conceived her paintings.
Anna and Bernhard Blume
Anna and Bernhard Blume: Pure Reason
27 June - 26 July
Buchmann Galerie
Charlottenstrasse 13
www.buchmanngalerie.com
and
Anna and Bernhard Blume: Pure Reason
Until 10 August
Hamburger Bahnhof
Invalidenstrasse 50-51
www.hamburgerbahnhof.de
Large-scale black and white photographs triumphantly document - not to say trumpet - the semi-violent antics of the sprightly artist-pair Anna and Bernhard Blume (1937, 1937). The series "Pure Reason" is spread over two venues, the Hamburger Bahnhof and Buchmann gallery, displayed at the latter alongside the couple's china.
Richard Serra
Richard Serra: Thinking on Your Feet
5 July - 7 September
Kunstwerke
Augustrasse 69
www.kw-berlin.de
For a decade from the late 60s, Richard Serra made films; the upcoming exhibition at KW is the first to focus on them. Serra's account of this work - "I probably had to shoot these films so as to make the difference to sculpture clearer to me" - stands as a rather ambiguous recommendation.
Alix Rule writes on art and politics. She has worked for In These Times and Dissent magazine, and her writing has appeared in a variety of other publications. Alix grew up in New York and studied at the University of Chicago at then at Balliol College, Oxford. After graduating she worked briefly as an organizer of low-wage workers in London, UK. Alix is interested in interior and outer space, organizing communities, "social entrepreneurship" and above all, clothing. She has recently moved to Berlin. You can contact her at alix.rule@gmail.com.
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