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Ariel Reichman
Ariel Reichman: Legal Settlement
Until 31 May
PROGRAM e.V.
Invalidenstraße 115
D-10115 Berlin
T +49 (0)30 39 50 93 18
Ariel Reichman was invited by Program Galerie to take up residence in the exhibition space for a six-month stretch. However, the Israeli artist's occupation looks impertinently like a squat and intends to bring to mind comparisons with Israeli's unwelcome settlements in the West Bank. During staged performances Reichman delineated sections of the space with masking tape and traced the marked area by crawling over the tape on his belly; bathed in red clay which he rubbed along the walls; hosted low-key dinner parties and hoisted a ragged white flag on a plywood stake. Obviously inspired by '70s performance artists (he studied with Katharina Sieverding and Hito Steyerl), the South African-born and Berlin-based Israeli citizen's work is more about ideas and statements than aesthetics. Discomfort - the viewers' and his own - is the paramount element of the performance which depicts Reichman's progressive settling into the space. "It is not the physical shape of a house or an 'abandoned' hill," Reichman declares, "but rather acts of ritual and idealistic national thought that are inherent to the settlement."
Installation view of No More Sugar For The Monkey: a guerilla art event
No More Sugar For The Monkey: a guerilla art event
Curated by Jochen Kooper and Christopher David
Stattbad
Until 1 June
Gerichtstr 65
Berlin
The labyrinthine industrial hallways, dark and damp corners, metal cages and low hanging pipe make the basement of the 2,000 square-meter swimming complex in Wedding where Jochen Kooper and Christopher David co-curated "No more sugar for the monkey: a guerrilla art event" seem more like a set for a SAW series installment than Berlin's newest hip exhibition space. To their credit, David and Kooper found more than thirty Berlin-based artists whose work was strong enough to compete with the astounding space. Included in "No Sugar For the Monkey" is a knock-out video installation by Tiphaine Shipman dedicated to an erstwhile lover, Hannes Bend's illuminated sister sculptures of two versions of "Venus" made from his signature hard candy casts, John Isaacs' and David Nicholson's collaborative sculpture and a shamanistic totem by Kenno Apatrida.
Evol
Evol
Wilde Galerie
Until 30 May
Chausseestrasse 7
D-10115 Berlin
T +49 (0)30 258 16 258
For his first solo show, Evol spray paints quiet scenes of bland prefab buildings on cardboard. The ten recent paintings the Heilbronn-born and Berlin-based artist produced on discarded packing material, and the one walk-in-sized installation, are all primarily grey, black, white and tan. The tan colour comes from the cardboard itself, which he uses as a base - allowing the scars and marks from where tape was torn to feature as weathering on the tired buildings he represents. The Hopper-esque scenes' subtle play of light and dark suggest they are taking place in mid-day when people are awake. Yet beside the tags on the wall, bicycles, cars, recycling bins and occasional shadows spotted behind window-frames, his streets are unpopulated. Nevertheless, they don't appear ominous or hopeless. Rather, the beauty of Evol's art is that he clearly feels genuine empathy for the occupants of these uninspiring yet comfortable habitations.
Amy Sillman
Amy Sillman: zum Gegenstand
carlier | gebauer
Markgrafenstraße 67
D-10969 Berlin
T +49 (0)30 2400 863-0
Amy Sillman has previously stated that her paintings function as "a way to engage in a kind of internal discourse, or sub-linguistic mumbling . . ." In her second solo show of new paintings, ink portraits and oil drawings, however, she graciously includes a zine where she expands on her intentions and inspirations. Sillman's paintings first appear as dreamy blends of abstraction and figurative imagery. Yet they evoke associations with critical theory, surrealism and psychology - all spiced up with playful wit. Stripping away the intellectual issues, the remaining insightful interplay between shapes, styles and colour in Stillman's soft, chunky and often suggestive forms creates what that the New York-based artist herself describes as imagery "realistic to the world even if it is abstract."
Annette Kelm
Sergej Jensen
Wolfgang Breuer
Annette Kelm, Sergej Jensen, Wolfgang Breuer - Organic Food Shop
Until 19 July
Kunst Werke Berlin
Auguststr. 69
10117 Berlin
For Wolfgang Breuer's first institutional solo show, the Berlin-based artist has installed an empty tram stop, battered recycling containers and blue steel fence under harsh fluorescent lights. The installation's name is intentionally misleading since there is nothing "organic" about the objects he gathered from the outside and brought into the exhibition space. Similarly, Annette Kelm's accompanying series, "I Love the Little Baby Giant Panda, I'd Welcome One to My Veranda show how the storm increases," also focuses on awkward relationships between what we expect from nature and artificial interventions. For her first solo in a major German institution, Kelm presents seven carefully staged photographs of a palm tree shot at night, in which the wind's direction completely unsettles the image. While the palm may seem to be the subject of the series, it is actually the invisible wind which Kelm strives to capture with her camera. But the most remarkable and rewarding relationship between nature and artistic engagement occurs in Sergej Jensen's abstract canvases. There, Jensen painstakingly applies pigment, diamond dust, packthread, wool and bleach to already torn or worn linen, jute and other colorful used textiles. He then allows patterns to emerge over the course of months or years, letting the work organically develop in its own natural course.
Gilbert & George
Gilbert & George: Jack Freak Pictures
Arndt & Partner
13 June - 18 September
Zimmerstrasse 90-91
D-10117 Berlin
T +49 (0) 30 280 8123
The crisp suits, scatological motifs, stern aesthetic and gay icon status of Gilbert & George resonate throughout Berlin's art scene. But the artists themselves have not had a show in the German capital for 14 years, and Berlin wasn't even a blip on their recent international tour. Thankfully, Arndt & Partner is correcting this oversight with a show of 20 recently-made large-scale images that British critic Michael Bracewell's catalogue calls "the most iconic, philosophically astute andvisually violent works that Gilbert & George have ever created . . ." It's about time!
Bridget Riley
Bridget Riley: Works on Paper
Galerie Max Hetzler
June 20 - August 01, 2009
Zimmerstraße 90/91
D-10117 Berlin
T +49 (30) 229 24 37
The soft pastels and vibrant patterns of Bridget Riley's works on paper signal that this show would be an ideally refreshing excursion on a summer afternoon. Riley's more aggressively hued paintings can be jarring and manic. But in cerise, turquoise, olive and cream, these lovely light patterns provide enough grace and charm to rival Berlin's lush, green lazy summer streets.
A story without a name, group show curated by Blair Taylor
20 June - 15 August 2009
Peres Projects
Schlesische Str. 26
10997 Berlin
T: +49 30 6162 6962
Organized by Peres Project's New York Director Blair Taylor, the Peres Project's summer show includes gallery artists such as Dash Snow and promises to be thought-provoking and provocative.
David Levine
David Levine
27 June - 1 August 2009
Feinkost
Bernauer Straße 71 - 72
13355 Berlin
T +49 (0)172 1849732
According to David Levine's calculations, struggling actors spend approximately $1,180 each year to have headshots made and distributed, and each week roughly 10,000 headshots are actually circulating between key points on the industry's landscape in New York alone. But what are these images that the industry insists are mandatory calling cards for actors in any professional arena? And what good are they as representatives of the actors' appearance, ability, range or appeal? For his second solo show at the Feinkost Galerie, Levine, a former actor, director and acting teacher himself, presents his swollen archive of culled headshots to give the images a leading role in his art, even if the headshots themselves never got their actors the parts they vainly sought.
Richard Deacon
Richard Deacon
27 June - 31 July 2009
Galerie Thomas Schulte
Charlottenstraße 24
D-10117 Berlin
T: +49 (0)30 2060 8990
Welsh and London-based sculptor Richard Deacon presents his sleek, futuristic metal sculptures. Deacon's sculptures have the high shine of Jeff Koon's metal toys. But instead of creating fantasy play-things, the winner of the 1987 Turner Prize focuses on the organic structure of the human body and our molecular make-up.
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ANA FINEL HONIGMAN is a Berlin-based critic and curator. She writes on contemporary art and fashion for publications including Artforum.com, Sleek, V, TANK, Art in America, Artnet.com, Art Journal, Whitewall, The National, Dazed & Confused and British Vogue. As a Senior Correspondent for the Saatchi Gallery's online magazine, Ana contributes exhibition reviews from Berlin, New York and elsewhere, as well as an interview series. To contact her, email anahonigman@hotmail.com
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| Published on 12-05-2009 |
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