Matt Mullican
Matt Mullican
Until 25 October
Klosterfelde
Zimmerstrasse 90/ 91
+49 (0)30 283 53 05
www.klosterfelde.de
Matt Mullican builds a color-coded exhibition hall at galerie Klosterfelde; within it he performs a manic existential accounting. The artist's museum displays mostly his own works - rubbings, icons, newspaper clippings, flags, buttons, and sketches, inter alia - and its architecture makes it impossible to get a sense of the whole.
Marcellvs L.
Marcellvs L.
Until 20 October
Berlinische Galerie
Alte Jakobstrasse 124 - 128
www.berlinischegalerie.de
The work of sound and video artist Marcellvs L. (b. 1980) has been drawing attention rapidly: in addition to a solo show at Berlin's Carlier | Gebauer, his work has been shown this year at Art Basel's Unlimited, abc Berlin, and in the 16th Sydney Biennial. He has recently been awarded this year's GASAG prize for young Berlin-based artists (previously winners include Clemens von Wedemeyer and Carsten Fock) - an honor which will result in another exhibition, at the Berlinische Galerie.
Tobias Putrih
Tobias Putrih
Until 24 October
Galerija Gregor Podnar
Lindenstrasse 35
+49 (0)30 259 346 51
www.gregorpodnar.com
Cinema and viewing art work as metaphors for one another in Putrih's recent pieces - this point or something close has been made by film theorist Stojan Velko. And even without the aid of Slovenian theory, the works shown at Podnar are full of grace. 'Re-projection', a cone of taught transparent filaments, hosts an image where a spotlight is shown onto it (the piece was shown earlier this year at Modena's Galleria Civica). In the even trimmer 'Pre-projection', a black cone funnels light down onto a shiny spoon. The spoon in turn reveals a tiny, but distinct, moving image: of a hidden ceiling fan.
Nicole Eisenman
Nicole Eisenman - Coping
Until 18 October
Barbara Weiss
Zimmerstrasse 88-89
+49 (0)30 262 42 84
Eisenman's oil paintings - urban streets, beerhalls, towns - are overfreighted with art historical references, and often appear to send up the idea of progress. The political valence seems to have grown pointed. Eisenman, who is based in New York, has recently called for a National Crying Day. Along with the half dozen paintings on view at Weiss, the artist shows her new series of monoprint portraits, 'Crying'.
Warren Neidich
Highway Child
Artists Anonymous, Alec Soth, Brendan Flanagan, Ethan Hayes-Chute, Kenno, Jaybo, Maxime Ballesteros Biguet, Nacnud Ogaviz, Pete Wheeler, Warren Neidich
Curated by Emilie Trice
Until 8 October
Kollektiv Berlin
+49 (0)17667876226
Landsberger Allee 54
www.kollektiv-berlin.com
Highway Child is a celebration of being on the road - a state which, mercifully, leaves little room for irony. The first space shows strong two-dimensional work, ranging from Artist Anonymous' psychedelic "negative paintings" to photographs by Alec Soth and Maxime Ballestros Biguet - and feels like a meditation on the theme that happy households are alike, but all those who leave home do so in their own way. In the subsequent rooms, meditation gives way to rock and roll, with a photo series projected onto a billboard (Neidich), a ramped bonsai jungle (Ogaviz) and a constantly growing piece (by Kenno, an outsider, who for years has been shuttling Berlin's detritus into art). A masquerade is promised at the gallery en route to the finissage.
Gedi Sibony
Gedi Sibony
Until 18 October
Galerie Neu
Philipstrasse 13
+49 30 285 75 50
New Yorker Gedi Sibony, known for his lightness of touch, turns gallery Neu into something like a back to nature experience. Eleven new works are displayed, almost all of a single material: plexiglass, plywood, canvas, plastic tarp. This is Sibony's first show in Berlin.
Cornelius Quabeck
Cornelius Quabeck
Until 4 October
Galerie Christian Nagel
Weydinger Str. 2/4
+49 (0)30-40042641
www.galerie-nagel.de
In Cornelius Quabeck's series on untreated canvases, suburban horizons are composed of ticket stubs, free fliers, and other bits of discarded junk. The little landscapes are swept by a mighty windstorm, and a minimal application of paint - gesturing, maybe, toward Oz?
Ann-Kristin Hamm
Ann-Kristin Hamm
Until 25 October
Wilma Tolksdorf
Zimmerstrasse 88/89
+49 (0) 30 20 05 88 12
www.wilmatolksdorf.de
Young Duesseldorf painter Ann-Kristin Hamm exhibits work for the first time in Berlin. Hamm's work assimilates the effect of digital layering to painting, and powerfully. In her canvases, detailed decorative elements collaborate playfully with pure forms to create a "diffuse spatiality."
An Te Liu
"Hier ist Amerika, oder Nirgends"
Until 27 September
Otl Aicher, Bara, Franka Kassner, Erwin Kneihsl, K2AO, Matthias Lehrberger, An Te Liu, Berthold Reiss, Anne Roessner, Kathrin Rothner, Esther Rutenfranz
Curated By Berthold Reiss
Galerie Ben Kaufmann
Strausbergerplatz 8
+49 (0) 30 4401 0466
In Hier ist Amerika, oder Nirgends, the America alluded to is non-literal - the title translates something like "This is Utopia - or nowhere". But the word "heir" deserves to be there. For one, this is an exhibition that is most definitely a place, complete with wallpaper spun from plans of Levittown, New York (by Canadian artist An Te Liu). In it two and three-dimensional pieces co-habitate, making none of artworks' standard claims to freedom and equality. Further, the artists invited by Munich-based painter Berthold Reiss co-operated to create a parallel sound environment to accompany their exhibited works. The logo that the group commissioned for Amerika is perhaps more like a flag.
Shimabuku
Shimabuku - Sky, Sea, Language and so on
Until 11 October
DAAD Galerie
Zimmerstrasse 89 / 90
Organized through:
Artpress / Ute Weingarten
+49 030 2196 1843
www.artpress-uteweingarten.de
Shimabuku talks about the "aesthetics of old customs" - of which he gives an example: "asian people eat round cakes during a full moon." This exhibition documents the artist's pursuit of a simple aesthetics. Displayed is evidence from his various forays, the clay pots that he used to catch octopi in Italy, a video of the flapping fish he served to visitors he led up to a museum's roof at dawn.
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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