Aleksandra Mir's new exhibition 'Triumph' collects together more than 2,500 trophies: sentimental objects representing the triumphs of others. Through this collection the artist looks at the history of the trophy and the ways we have of signifying victory--in sports and in the art world--as well as at the emotional moment of letting go, which every participant did in this project when they gave to Mir their souvenir of past grandeur.
Solo shows by Evol (below) and Ariel Reichman deal with issues of occupancy; Gilbert and George have their first show in Berlin for over a decade; three artists - Annette Kelm, Sergej Jensen and Wolfgang Breuer - take over the Kunst Werke; Any Sillman shows new paintings; and Peres Projects presents a summer show of gallery artists.
Continue reading "ANA FINEL HONIGMAN'S TOP 10 BERLIN SHOWS IN MAY AND JUNE" »
The paintings of Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie show how we can envisage an approach to painting today that goes beyond the purely aesthetic. Her large canvases, arranged within the space like a stage set, depict interiors that refer to 19th-century decor designs. 
Peter Wiebel reflects on the significance of tatoos, the subject of this exhibition which features work by Herbert Hoffmann (below), Robert Mapplethorpe, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Prince, Leni Riefenstahl, Wolfgang Tillmans, Xiaohu Zhou, John Isaacs, Michael Najjar, Alberto Garcia Alix, Kim Joon and Lucas Samaras. 
Hugh Mendes' paintings draw on a combination of the historical notion of the still life and a psycho-geographic embracing of the random and accidental, set within a prescribed framework of world events. By obsessively collecting newspapers, he employs daily events by juxtaposing found images and headlines from clippings. Mendes' increasingly hyper-real renditions become haunting epitaphs for our society. 
Over the last ten years, dissatisfied with the often complacent values of the photography world, Clare Strand has assembled a body of work that is both subversive and celebratory in its approach to photographic conventions. During this period Strand's art has developed through a series of increasingly interesting and unique projects that have explored various photographic genres, from Victorian portraiture to crime scene and forensic photography. 
At the Saatchi Online booth at Scope Basel 2008 the Japanese artist Teiji Hayama distinguished himself with his ethereal figures often inspired by well-known images of female deities. For his first solo show, Hayama presents a series of connected paintings in which fragile- and innocent-looking figures are pictured with tattoos, markers of adolescence and the impermanence of a phase of life involving mental, social and psychological changes.
'I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around: that nothing was more important or less important.' William Eggleston. The American artist William Eggleston is considered to be one of the most idiosyncratic photographers of the 20th century. This comprehensive retrospective follows his artistic development from his early black-and-white images and pioneering transition to colour photography up to the present day.
Highlights in Berlin in March and April include Bjoern Dahlem's outsized models of cosmic phenomena bolted together out of home improvement stock (below); a new series of photographs by Darren Almond shot in the Yellow Mountain range, a site which has moved centuries of Chinese artists; Andrea Zittel's Smockshop project which generates income for "artists whose work is either non-commercial, or not yet self-sustaining"; and Helen Cho's 'soft paintings' made out of black and white karate belts. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE'S ROUND-UP OF SHOWS IN BERLIN" »
Much lauded and feted artists are nothing new to history. But the megawatt VIP "Art Star," whose antics and excesses helped to define the recent pre-recession era's idea of artistic success, is now (until the art market can support fun, folly and rock-star style fantasy) a thing of the past. 
Continue reading "ANA FINEL HONIGMAN: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE VIP 'ART STAR'?" »
For his debut show in Berlin Finnish photographer Janne Lehtinen presents a series of works inspired by the desire to fly. It's a dream destined to fail, and the artist, depicted int he series of photographs, never gets far off the ground. 
Saatchi Online artist Angelika J. Trojnarski, who exhibited with Saatchi Online at Scope Basel 2008, is having her first solo show in Dusseldorf. Trojnarski's painting technique reflects the subjects of her works, the paint applied layer by layer like plastering of old walls or the rusty scaring of old metal.
Among the shows not to be missed in January and February are a mini-retrospective for Bill Viola, a debut show for Ignacio Uriarte who has 'established himself as a sort of genius among finger-drummers and Xerox-machine exploiters', an array of strong work by US-based video artists including Robin Rhode and Mika Rottenberg, and a series of exhibitions in which Berlin and Paris galleries have swapped artists. 
Based in New Delhi, Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra work collaboratively in a wide variety of media including painting, sculpture, installation, video, graphic and product design, websites, music and fashion. For their first show in Germany Thukral & Tagra have produced a suite of works entitled "Nouveau Riche" which focus on the postmodern architectural style that can be found throughout India and is commonly referred to as "Punjabi Baroque." 
Paul Graham was the first photographer to unite contemporary colour photography with the classic genre of social documentary. Born in the 1950s, Graham chose to dedicate himmself to photography at a time when the medium was predominantly excluded from the art world; he is now considered one of the most significant photographers of his generation. He has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2009 and a major survey of his work from the past 25 years will be on view at the Folkwang Museum, Essen from 24 January. 
This exhibition, 'A Look Away: South African Photography Today', introduces four emerging photographers from South Africa: Pieter Hugo, Sabelo Mlangeni, Mikhael Subotzky and Nontsikelelo Veleko. The title of the exhibition ironically describes what photography in Southern Africa always avoided - and which, in the work of these four artists, is strongly compensated for in photographs that draw attention to the unknown and unnoticed in a complex society.
After an odyssey lasting almost five years as a forced labourer in Germany, and as a displaced person after the war, Jonas Mekas arrived in 1949 in New York. This marked the beginning of his new life, which from then on he has dedicated to film. His solo exhibition at the Museum Ludwig showcases Mekas's wide-ranging influence, his sheer passion for film, his enduring influence on artists and film-makers of several generations, and on the very way film history is written. To watch his film about Andy Warhol and George Macunias click here. 
Mumbai-based Riyas Komu shows a series of enormous carved wooden skulls on which look like an ominous army of death warriors (below); Polish painter Przemyslaw Matecki debuts in Berlin with a compelling concoction of magazine collage; through a combination of drawings and cartoon-like oil paintings Bjarne Melgaard tells the troubling erotic misadventures of a young male prostitute; Iona Rozeal Brown creates paintings on panel and paper that combine the style of ukiyo-e woodblock prints with contemporary hip-hop iconography; and Adrian Ghenie presents new drawings and paintings at two different venues. 
Continue reading "ANA FINEL HONIGMAN'S ROUND-UP OF THE BEST SHOWS ON IN BERLIN THIS MONTH" »
Sales may have been slow and visitor numbers down but this year's ArtForum Berlin proved to be a functioning selling ground and a possible role model for other fairs nervous about surviving the coming crunch. 
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Since 2005, New York-based Wade Guyton has worked primarily on canvas; his tool, however, is not the brush but an Epson Stylus Pro 4000/9600 inkjet printer, a machine used for making large-format prints. The new works in this exhibition are all black monochromatic paintings, which engage with the formal repertory of modernism but draw on the most up-to-date technological means. 
The thirteenth ART FORUM BERLIN - The International Fair for Contemporary Art - will take place at the Berlin Exhibition Grounds from 31 October to 03 November 2008.
Thea Djordjadze's installations, objects and drawings of echo the atmosphere of various art-historical and cultural-historical contexts. She has transformed the large exhibition space of Sprueth Magers Cologne gallery into a 'place': a passageway enclosed by an modernistic form.
Three exhibitions explore the cult of the personality from Andy Warhol to Sarah Lucas; a group show about German agnst features works by Thomas Hirschhorn and Andreas Slominski; new works by Amie Dicke at Peres Projects (below); a solo show by Nina Canell who says that she is 'searching for the art of conversation between the sidewalk and a blind man's metal stick'; and Spruth Magers opens their new Berlin outpost with a show by Thomas Scheibitz. 
For the first exhibition in its Berlin space, Galeria Plan B presents a cross-section of its portfolio, intended as an introduction and statement of purpose. 'Berlin Show #1' assembles projects made by artists working with the gallery since its inception, in Cluj, Romania, in 2005.
With over 50 paintings, a group of works on paper, and about 130 painted film posters, this exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of Peter Doig's achievements over the last 20 years. One focus of the show is the painted posters Doig produced for his cinema project STUDIOFILMCLUB in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He has also set up a special STUDIOFILMCLUB in Frankfurt, where he will be screening films he has selected.
Nedko Solakov's wide-ranging, highly personal work is the subject of a new touring exhibition, currently on show at the Kunstmuseum Bonn.
Don't miss Matt Mullican's colour-coded exhibition hall at Klosterfelde; a new sound installation by Marcellvs L.; paintings by Nicola Eisenman, Cornelius Quabeck (below) and Ann-Kristin Hamm; and New Yorker Gedi Sibony's debut in Berlin. 
Deutsche Börse presents a special exhibition of the four finalists of the 2008 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008 at its headquarters in Frankfurt. The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize is an annual, international award allocated to a contemporary photographer who has made a significant contribution (exhibition or publication) to photography in Europe in the previous year. 
The organizers of Art Berlin Contemporary had obviously thought hard about what could make the large-scale commercial art event less tedious. For instance: rides. On Thursday evening, John Bock's room-on-an-axel was rotating like a hamster wheel, stopping periodically for visitors to get inside and be tumbled around. People were lining up! The packed vernissage felt less like the by-invitation-only event that it was billed as, than a "high school reunion", in the words of one artist. 
For his first solo exhibition at Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Sam Lewitt presents work collated into groups of graphic matter that appear to be remnants from a printers' shop, elements that appear to be collected from the dustbin.
Since the invention of photography more than 170 years ago it has been largely women who have used this technical medium to project themselves through role playing and masquerading.
The exhibition focuses on contemporary women artists such as Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Monica Bonvicini and Pipilotti Rist, who with the aid of photography and video art investigate the female image. 
Don't miss 'Change', a new exhibition by the conceptual Paris-based art collective at Berlin's Galerie Neu, on through 23 August.
'1% WATER' explores the boundaries between contemporary art and design, hoping to focus our attention on our relationship to water. The exhibition showcases works, concepts and experimental environments by designers, artists and scientists that are beginning to shape a new water consciousness.
Among those exhibiting are: Atelier Van Lieshout, Elina Brotherus, Edward Burtynsky, Song Dong and Hella Jongerius. 
Bojan Sarcevic first gained international recognition at the second Manifesta 1998 in Luxemburg when he sealed windows, doors, and other openings with paper and pieces of fabric in a former exhibition space of a natural history museum. This interest in space and its social, cultural, and psychological connotations is still of fundamental importance for Sarcevic, whose exhibition in Hamburg presents five 16 mm films that explore the surfaces of abstract objects - small sculptures in wood, metal, and other materials. 
Camera Work's upcoming exhibition of works by Robert Polidori will feature a new series of photographs of the Russian Kremlin for the very first time. The exhibition will also include his series of pictures of the Palace of Versailles, the Cuban capital of Havana (below), as well as architecture photographs of New York. 
Ergin Çavuşoğlu's video installations reflect the complex and constantly changing migration of people between places and countries. Often filmed in ports, airports or markets, his videos treat the themes of travel and the process of transition that determines our reality. In this way they construct a lyrical narrative about the personal experiences of individuals within a broader collective history.
To watch an interview with by Ergin Çavuşoğlu on Saatchi Online TV click here. 
For her first solo exhibition Nadja Bournonville presents the beginning of a project in three parts. Part one, entitled 'One for every wish', consists of analogue photography, text-based drawings on paper and a slideshow. The starting point for the project was a small wooden ship, similar to the wooden schooner Lefteria that set sail in 1972 from the coast of Great Britain to Spain. It was hit by a French weather ship and sank, taking Bournonville's uncle, Magnus, down with it. 
Human organization, and the force humans apply to nature to create man-made order, obsess Michael Sailstorfer. With his small retrospective laid out over two rooms adjacent to Terence Koh's megalomaniacal installation - a blindingly white, nuclear fallout of cuddly effigies which includes a Peter Rabbit doll being sodomized by an umbrella frame - Sailstorfer is a comparably quiet wallflower. His works strike a soft, unfamiliar tone of art from a different era. From Land art to Fluxus, the line of inquiry of his current show '10,000 Stones' grips reality in a calmly assertive way. 
Continue reading "STEVE PULIMOOD ON MICHAEL SAILSTORFER AT THE SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE, FRANKFURT" »
As if in a march past, Tobias Rehberger presents 40 works spread along 70 metres. Casting chronology to the wind, he has simply placed works from 15 years of creative production next to one another: chairs reminiscent of designer classics, his 'vase portraits', artificial limbs mounted on plinths, paper flowers with a Japanese ring to them, lamps made of Velcro tape, objects made of Perspex, video racks. The old works are bathed in a new glory, while simultaneously a new work comes into being: a mural made of light, shadows and colour. "I like the idea that something elaborate and solid could be the starting point for something vague and sketchy", Rehberger says. 
Paparazzi photography is an aggressive form of photojournalism, particularly today when the famous names in show business are hunted down and pushed into dangerous situations for the sake of getting the most interesting picture possible. In the 1960's and 1970's, the "classic" era of the paparazzi, the combination of voyeurism and exhibitionism, whereby photographers lie in wait for the stars to make their public appearance, was less strident and loud. Inventiveness, speed and persistence, along with a touch of cheekiness--put to use at the Cannes Film Festival, or on the Via Veneto in Rome--was usually enough to guarantee good results. 
David Levine (below) takes irony to a new level with a one-off show today which will be open but closed to the public; Richard Serra's films from the 60s go on view in July; Mai-Thu Perret offers a seasonal riff on the bikini; and the Berlin Biennial comes to an end this month with its final exhibition of works by Paulina Olowska and Zofia Stryjenska. 
Michael Light's latest project 'SOME DRY SPACE' is a project on a monumental scale - enormous handmade artist's books in portfolio format with accompanying display tripods flanked by selected pigment prints on aluminium in two formats. The series is part of Light's ongoing comprehensive photographic survey of Western America from the air, for which he last year received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in support of the project. 
Aida Ruilova's newest work, 'Two Timers', shot in 16 mm black and white film, conjures a dark body of water, and in it two subjects: a young woman - apparently naked - and a rat. Constructed of a number of under-framed shots, one has the impression of humming insect-like around the pair. Each slips in and out of focus. The woman is holding the rat in front of her face. The rat - wet and glossy - in on the woman's neck, in her hair. The rat is swimming across the frame. The woman grabs the rat by the tail, almost fondling it, and pulls it back towards her. 
Continue reading "LAST CHANCE: ALIX RULE ON AIDA RUILOVA AT GALERIE GUIDO W BAUDACH, BERLIN" »
Last Wednesday Olafur Eliasson's BMW "art car" made its European debut. The BMW Art Car program has for decades involved commissioning artists to, well, paint cars. Andy Warhol famously painted his BMW in twenty minutes; Rauschenberg did one as well (decorated with monochromatic reproductions of famous paintings), and so did Jenny Holzer ("PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT"). Eliasson has, perhaps typically, turned the brief of the commission on its head by not painting a car but creating a car body made of ice. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE ON THE DEBUT OF OLAFUR ELIASSON'S BMW 'ART CAR' IN MUNICH" »
Alix Rule previews the forthcoming New Life Berlin Festival which opens next week. The festival is inviting all Saatchi Online artists to apply for participation in the festival or to assist in documenting selected festival projects. To learn more about New Life Berlin and to submit your own project proposal, please visit the New Life Berlin Festival. Saatchi Online TV will also be documenting the festival's live events, investigating the role of documentation as discourse and producing direct responses to the festival as it unfolds. The final application deadline for Saatchi Online TV at New Life Berlin is 28 May 2008. To apply click here. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE ON WOOLOO AND THE NEW LIFE BERLIN FESTIVAL" »
Born in Hamburg in 1980, Dennis Scholl has quickly gained recognition for his unusual drawings. Small intimate works and larger expansive ones are densely populated with minute motifs that have been painstakingly executed; others seem like fleeting sketches, suggestive of figurative forms. Through his use of metamorphosis, the artist creates something at once grotesque and bizarre, which seems recognizable to the viewer but ultimately remains an enigma. 
When I think of Mark Rothko I think of a figure in the modern art sale rooms whose paintings can fetch $60m. I think of a sort of social mannerism that goes on at certain levels of the art world, where you're supposed to be so deeply moved by a Rothko that you break down and cry. And I think of a painting style that comes from the 1950s, which is about creating a subtle but powerful impression of a kind of inner glow. Rothko committed suicide in 1970 in a particularly violent and horrific way; he was found lying on the floor of his studio in a pool of blood, the tendons in the inside of his elbows cut nearly to the bone. A cult of Rothko has grown up around this distressing fact of his life story. Formlessness is seen as brooding foreboding, and Rothko becomes a modern Van Gogh, too sensitive for this world but a great artist of pain who leaves us a painted testimony of profound humane tragic sadness. But a striking feature of the present Rothko touring retrospective (which opens at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg today and tours to Tate Modern in September) is how careful and serious Rothko really is as an artist compared to the hysterical and hasty things that are said about him. 
Atelier van Lieshout became internationally well-known in the 1990's with the production of mobile houses and "covers", the conception of which was based on the freedom of movement, flexibility of design and the subversion of government planning approval. Their latest project, 'Slave City', on view at the Museum Folkwang until 6 July, is a utopian urban project designed to maximize rationality, efficiency and profit in a highly modern achievement-oriented society. 
On view this month in Berlin is a debut show for American photographer Joel Sternfeld who is exhibiting works from his series on American utopias (below); plus queasy-making paintings by Frank Nitsche, Martin Assig's coloured 'auratic house objects', psychedelic painting-collages by Israeli artist Tal R, and two new projects by Carsten Nicolai inspired by scientific forays of the past. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE'S ROUND-UP OF THE BEST SHOWS ON IN BERLIN THIS MONTH" »
In September 2001 at a press conference for the Hamburg Music festival the avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was asked to comment on the 9/11 attacks. They were, he said, "Lucifer's Greatest works of Art", a remark which led to widespread criticism as well as to the cancellation of his upcoming tour. In this now infamous statement, Stockhausen alludes to the visual impact of stilled representations of major world events, acknowledging the split between the reality of momentous happenings and their visual representation. This exhibition explores the way that both artistic and media images relating to key or extreme political events often manifest a sense of transcendence, even a beauty (at once overwhelming and terrible), altogether different to the reality of the event itself. 
In this exhibition, which opens on 7 May, British photographer Martin Parr presents a new series with images of art fairs, horse races and fashion shows, alongside his own personal collections of strange everyday objects decorated with photographs, postcards and works by important British and international photographers. 
Born in 1964, Sharon Lockhart is best known for producing works in series, often consisting of both photographs and films, that she develops slowly over time, often after substantial research. This major exhibition presents her work from the last 15 years, and explores her interest in the tensions between photography and film, documentary and art, analytical distance and subjective empathy, socially engaged subject matter and rigorously conceptual form, and the transitional period between childhood and adulthood. 
The Buchmann Galerie opens its second exhibition space in Berlin tomorrow, the Buchmann Box, with new photographic works by the Berlin-based German artist Bettina Pousttchi. 
Now in its fourth year, Gallery Weekend has become an institution in Berlin with galleries opening some of their most hotly anticipated shows of the year, and collectors and art lovers alike flocking to the city in their droves. Alix Rule looks ahead to what's in store this weekend, including new works by Olafur Eliasson, Carsten Nicolai, Dan Attoe (below), Aida Ruilova, Marcellvs L., Tomasz Kowalski, Maja Koerner and Bimal who at 5.30pm on 2 May will invite the 34 participating galleries to send diplomatic envoys to Zimmerstrasse 11, at which point Bimal will declare autonomy from the ensuing Weekend. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE PREVIEWS GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN, 2-4 MAY" »
After a her widely acclaimed exhibition at the Neue Berliner Kunstverein in 2006 with her video installation 'Costume Party', the Pakistani/US American video artist Maryam Jafri premieres her most recent video work Staged Archive (2008), inspired by accounts of Victorian missionaries and travellers voyaging to the far reaches of the globe, often with disastrous consequences. Jafri was born in Pakistan in 1972 and now lives in both Copenhagen and New York. 
'In 1991 the Dom itself emblazoned the cover of the New York Times Magazine section with the headline, more or less, 'What is the Center of the Art World: Cologne or New York?'... Sitting in the Art Cologne booth this year there was an eerie stillness, a feeling of listlessness in the air, like being part of a display in a vitrine at a museum of natural history. Though there were occasional big-ticket sales of Richter's and the like, at the same time I witnessed more than one disaffected participant that stated their intention not to return.' Gallerist Kenny Schachter reports from this year's poorly attended, controversy-riddled Art Cologne. 
Continue reading "KENNY SCHACHTER: OBITUARIES - ART COLOGNE" »
Alix Rule began her tour of the Berlin Biennale, which opened last weekend, at an outdoor site in the center of Berlin along the former wall - near to everything, but paradoxically next to virtually nothing. Before the biennial, the space was - perhaps surprisingly - a sculpture park, run by a local artist group. Before the wall was erected the space was essentially an unremarkable working-class district - something like New York's Hell's Kitchen - and long before that it was presumably a marshy field, which is something like what it is now. Aside from its name, Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum has not been embellished for the biennial. There are lightweight metal fences around the lots, falling over to permit access. The "permission denied" area is ostentatiously taped off with red and white, there are holes that seem unauthorized and a lot of trash. Not to say an unbelievable amount of trash. Some of it so implausibly and poetically trashy (a single woman's high heeled shoe, apparently c. 1969) that I began to doubt that it could be authentic. Was it possible that the biennial concept called for a trash enhancement? 
Not to be missed in Berlin this April - Stu Mead's children's book erotica (below), a Wolfgang Tillmans retrospective, the Celeste Kunstpreis, and solo shows for Christian Schoenewaelder (recently featured as a Saatchi Online Critic's Choice) Nathan Coley and Aurel Schlesinger. 
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'True North' features the work of seven contemporary artists whose photographic or video-based projects evoke the tradition of Northern Romantic landscape painting as well as its legacy in later nineteenth-century photography. Yet unlike their Romantic antecedents, the works in this exhibition are historically and politically self-reflexive and call into question the notion of a pure, unchangeable North. The show closes 13 April.
"I wanted to capture the last moments of childhood by means of an imaginary party," says Vee Speers. What she has cast in strange, pale colour photos is an ambivalent state between freedom and role play, between spontaneity and premonition, between the world of children and the world of adults. 
The Hamburg Photography Triennial takes place this year from 11-20 April. The Triennial presents photographers from countries all over the world, as well as numerous photography exhibitions in museums, galleries and at other locations in the city. Highlights include exhibitions by Bertien van Manen, Sharon Lockhart, Candida Höfer and Fischli & Weiss, and a portfolio viewing session where young photographs can have their work assessed by experts. 
Yona Friedman is one of the most important theorists and utopians of architecture of our time. Born in Budapest in 1923, he has lived in Paris for many years. Friedman's oeuvre - and this exhibition - comprises urban-planning models, theoretical writings, and animated films. His visionary mega-structures for cities, whose inhabitants could flexibly shape their spatial and social worlds, have inspired generations of architects and urban planners. 
Among the exhibitions on view this month in Berlin are solo shows by Bettina Rheims, Eberhard Havekost, Christian Jankowski, Chiharu Shiota, Rosemaire Trockel, and Algerian artist Ali Kaaf's debut solo show (below) in Europe. 
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Not to miss in Berlin this month - Tim Kube's (recently graduated from London's Chelsea College of Art) debut in Berlin, and solo shows for Marepe, Thomas Zipp, Sejla Kameric, John Pilson and Dan Perjovschi. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE'S ROUND-UP OF THE BEST SHOWS ON IN BERLIN THIS MONTH" »
Alix Rule's selection of shows not to miss in Berlin this month include solo shows by Ruben Ochoa, Saul Fletcher, Martin Parr and Candida Hofer, plus a double-act from Georg Baselitz and Jonathan Meese who share the same birthday (day, not year) and a show of light-themed work from the Sammlung Haubrok Collection. 
For her first solo show in Berlin Eva Lauterlein presents a series of portraits entitled 'Chimères', a title which refers to the mythological creatures which, according to Homer, were part lion, part goat and part dragon. Lauterlein subtly merges various aspects of a face, photographed from various angles, into a single portrait creating a disturbing metamorphosis which is radical and yet hardly noticeable. 
Ulrich Hensel's running series of pictures of building sites entice the viewer with their verisimilitude - in theory, they're about as familiar, ordinary a sight as one could think of - while they surreptitiously work their special magic to suggest an arresting disjoining shake from the naked truth, writes Lupe Nunez-Fernandez.
Matthias Weischer, Jannis Kounellis, Markus Selg, Ulrich Gebert, Helmut Stallaerts, and the first class of graduates from the new Ostkreuz photography school are all exhibiting work this month in Berlin. 
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We had been summoned to a birthday brunch held in honor of the Philippe Parreno exhibition at Esther Schipper one year ago. A remake of the exhibition? An "echo," he called it, yes, of "Interior Cartoons," but this time with candles on top. Oversized scented candles, no less, leaning in the corner of the room. A year ago, Parreno had filled the room (by not filling the room) with changing aroma - coffee, "clean ambient," and even the perfume of Esther Schipper - infiltrated through an air duct. Now these "gallery" scents had taken on the form of the blown-out memories of yesteryear. Déjà vu with a slight variation, just like the workings of our fickle memory. 
Continue reading "APRIL ELIZABETH LAMM'S LATEST DIARY FROM BERLIN AND PARIS" »
The common sense that like the Paris of the 1920s, the New York of the 50s, Berlin is the creative epicenter of the moment has inevitably sent onlookers searching for its Rue Montparnasse or Bleecker Street. On a wide strip of road that runs between what once were the east and west halves of the city the search has been declared over. Brunnenstrasse is now home to around two dozen galleries and this number is doubling every year. Its former factory spaces have become studios, exhibitions are opening in abandoned storefronts; even the street's kiosks, the portable toilets gracing the road works site, the discarded boxes outside Brunnenstrasse's discount supermarket seem to charmed with magic potential - you never know what might turn out to be the next gallery. So captivated was a group of Norweigan curators that they decided to organize a show entitled 'Brunnenstrasse 2007' which runs at the Kunsthalle Bergen until 7 November. 
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Artworks must communicate with the aliens. If they ignite a dialogue between planets, then art "works" for a certain cause. I couldn't resist the temptation to put one of those artworks on my chest: it was a t-shirt bearing pataphysical logic: "I'm Marxist with Groucho Leanings." (The t-shirt idea hails from Cyprus, land of failed Manifestos.) 
Continue reading "APRIL ELIZABETH LAMM'S LATEST DIARY FROM BERLIN" »
This year's KunstFilmBiennale, opening tomorrow in Cologne and Bonn synchronously and running through 24 October, is a great chance to see new film works by international artists - including premieres by Gabriela Fridriksdottir and more.
Not to be missed in Berlin are new shows by Jim Harris, Gabriela Fridriksdottir, Sebastian Diaz Morales,
Jonathan Horowitz, Ernesto Neto, and Zhang Huan's enormous Buddha made out of incense ash. 
Reading the slogans filling Texan public spaces as captured on Peter Granser's photographs reveals a darkness lurking within the conservative Southern kitsch. 'Signs II', the latest installment in the artist's ongoing documentary project, opens at Kaune, Sudendorf gallery in Cologne today.
You have to love German bureaucracy. In order to be counted as a "fair", a selling-event needs to last for at least five days. The result is that Berlin's Art Forum is longer than Frieze, The Armory, or Miami Basel - and much in spirit of the city, has more time than it needs to do what it needs to do. Collectors turned out for the opening on Friday 28 September - by Sunday morning children dominated. What better weekend outing for a young Berlin family than to put the kids in the stroller and go play on the Dharmesh, so mom can go listen to Hans Ulrich Obrist in panel discussion. Kunstmesse is the new word for Knut. 
Until January 2008, the Württembergische Kunstverein and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart are showing the first comprehensive exhibition of the works of Canadian artist Stan Douglas. The exhibition encompasses fourteen video and film installations, as well as numerous photographs, exploring the artist's work from the 1980s until the present. 
'We were celebrating in grand fashion the second opening of Sylvie Fleury's "Hypnotic Poison." The drinks ran out early, and hey, "Who refused to turn on the lights? The artist?" I asked the gallerist. "Yes, the artist," said the gallerist. Then I asked the artist (as any good fact-checker should), and the artist said, "I don't know who's in charge of the lighting... they're like their own artwork, not mine."' I spent the next day looking at the colors of my own mind with the Dreammachine and its maker, David Woodard, who introduced the Dreammachine magic to the pornographer Bruce LaBruce (below) ...' 
Continue reading "APRIL ELIZABETH LAMM'S LATEST DIARY FROM BERLIN" »
There hung suspended a reflective ring, an orange light beaming through it from the back of the opera house to cast co-centric orange circles. As the music rises it starts to turn. The ring's surface sends an expanding and contracting oval across the stage, the audience, owning the space over which it turns like an enormous monster's eyeball, a sun. So began Olafur Eliasson's career as stage designer in Berlin last week, with the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze's opera, 'Phaedra'. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE ON OLAFUR ELIASSON'S FIRST OPERATIC VENTURE" »
New paintings by Wilhelm Sasnal (below), Tine Benz and Tim Eitel, Michael Kosakowski's filmic reconstruction of the destruction World Trade Center and Anton Stoianov's Byzantine-esque wood panels are among the show not to miss in Berlin this month. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE'S ROUND-UP OF THE BEST SHOWS ON IN BERLIN THIS MONTH" »
'Walk Off' is the first comprehensive exhibition in Europe for the South African artist Robin Rhode whose work is inspired by the street. Rhode temporarily occupies surfaces found in public spaces, draws objects with chalk on them and then interacts with the drawings: he draws a bicycle on the floor and tries to push it; he draws a car on a wall and tries to break into it with a crowbar. This show brings together drawings, photographs, animations and sculptures, plus an 'action room', where Rhode will produce a wall drawing and develop a performance with the dancer Jean-Baptiste Andre and the composer Thomas Larcher. The performance will take place tonight at 7pm. 
Personal history and historical tradition intuitively meet in the photographic work of Anastasia Khoroshilova (b. 1978, Moscow, lives and works in Berlin). Over the last six years she's been documenting the new Russian life loaded with a sense of a lingering past in a series titled 'Islanders', currently on view at the Lingen Kunsthalle; a selection of her most recent portraits is also soon to open at Galeria Fucares, Madrid.
Fleeing strange new weather systems, overcrowded public transport systems and code black terror alerts - four London based artists - Toby Christian, Paul T Eastwood, Ian Homerston and Richard Whitby - shake the dust of their adopted hometown from their feet and escape to Berlin to stage 'Deserter', a four-man exhibition at Gallery 33. 
"New York will soon be as irrelevant as St. Tropez." This was the sentence I had put through a test-wash. It kept coming back to me in the form of, "but New York is so hip" or "You pay 5000 dollars to get a table at ..." No one was getting my point. I'm not sure that I was either after spending the last three weeks castle-hopping with my better-healed friends. Not Kassel, but castle, yes, though Kassel did make it on the agenda, after a weekend at Hubertus Jagd, the hunt, that is, in a castle just outside of Kassel. But the evening before the hunt was an exclusive Town and Country art extravaganza, thanks to Michelle Nicole Fine Arts of Zurich and the graciously charming hosts, Joachim and Elisabeth von Reden, whose castle park serves as an extension of several public art projects. In the Reden's vast park, somewhere in-between Tobias Rehberger's tree houses and Atelier von Lieshout's red capsule now stands Plamen Dejanoff's Golden Pavilion, fashioned in bronze and perfect for tea parties. 
Berlin's galleries slow down in August. No need to feel guilty for being glad. Some of the city's most fascinating and most industrious artists are unrepresented. This month's round up highlights some of the best work by artists without galleries. As varied and international as the commercial scene, this crowd is working at least as hard. Time off isn't for wasting. It's for discovering what you haven't already clocked. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE ON 10 YOUNG BERLIN-BASED ARTISTS NOT YET REPRESENTED BY GALLERIES" »
'South of Heaven', a major solo exhibition by Gardar Eide Einarsson, tackles the way we assimilate small parts of the world around us, trying to escape from the everyday sensory overload, customizing the world in order to make sense of it. This politically charged show brings together paintings and photographs by the New York-based Norwegian artist. 
Stan Douglas's standing as one of the most influential film and video artists of the last two decades is to be confirmed in a large retrospective curated by Hans D Christ and Iris Dressler in close collaboration with the artist and spread across two venues in Stuttgart this autumn and winter. Together, the venues will house fourteen of the Canadian-born artist's film and video installations, together with many photographic works.
Among the more memorable works at this year's event are Mike Kelley's 'Petting Zoo' (below), Hans-Peter Feldmann's luxury public toilets and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's installation 'Roman de Münster (A Münster Novel)', a series of small-scale replicas of sculptures from the last three editions of Skulptur Projekte Münster, reminding us that, as well as being the ideal summer art-tourism destination and city marketer's dream, the festival is a living archive of, pilgrimage site and playground for public art. 
Continue reading "BILL ROBERTS ON SKULPTUR PROJEKTE, MUNSTER 07" »
'A Crime Against Art' is a film in six chapters based on a trial staged at an art fair in Madrid in February 2007. The trial is inspired by the mock trials organized by Andre Breton in the 1920s and 30s, and playfully raises a number of polemical issues about the world of contemporary art. The film will be premiered on Friday, 17 August 2007 at 8pm. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Anselm Franke, Hila Peleg, who directed the film, and Anton Vidokle. 
Rather than presenting a hundred thousand words on the subject, Michael Kunze's answer to the philosophical question naming his latest painting series engages the viewer in a game of slightly blurry retro-targeted confrontation, writes Lupe Nunez-Fernandez.
Willie Doherty, who was born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1959, is currently enjoying one of the largest museum surveys of his work to date as well as representing Northern Ireland in one of the most talked about exhibitions at the Venice Biennale. In order to do justice to the evolution of Doherty's impressive oeuvre, the Hamburg Kunstverein and the Lenbachhaus Munich have developed two different, complementary exhibitions that together present a representative selection of Doherty's work from the start of his career in the early 1990s to the present day. Willie Doherty will be giving a lecture about his work on Thursday, 26 July at 7 pm. 
"I am an artist and documentarian. It's a reflective role - active but not ideological". The Kunstmuseum Stuttgart opened last week a comprehensive mid-career survey of Josephine Meckseper's multimedia work, her first solo show at a museum. Over 150 works are on display including a number of new works created specially for the exhibition. 
'Regulated Fool's Milk Meadow', a major new commission by New York-based artist Phoebe Washburn that opened on Saturday in Berlin, continues her interest in consumer culture and recycling, taking her bricolage architecture into new territory with the use for the first time of computer-controlled motors. 
Continue reading "MATT PRICE ON PHOEBE WASHBURN AT DEUTSCHE GUGGENHEIM, BERLIN" »
Check out Jorinde Voigt's delicate hand-drawn diagrams, a group show exploring the shared language dividing art and decor, a selection from the Flick collection amounting to an homage to Jason Rhoades who died last year, Frank Rothe's summer camp photos, Haegue Yang's spraypaint and origami sculptures, and the former Dior designer Hedi Slimane interprets youth culture, showcasing the (predictable) likes of Dan Colen and Ryan McGinley. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE'S ROUND-UP OF THE BEST SHOWS ON IN BERLIN THIS MONTH" »
Peres Projects' Berlin branch has just opened its summer group exhibition exploring new trends in 'fucked-up figuration'. The artists featured in the show are Dennis Tyfus, Wes Lang, Eddie Martinez, Francine Spiegel, Ben Jones, Joe Grillo, Tomoo Gokita, Ry Fyan and Taylor McKimens.
Starring lush potted plants and anonymous shimmering objects set in the stillness of abandoned-looking chiaroscuro interiors, Melanie Schiff's new series of photographs focuses on the subtle expression of growth, and death, suggested by the touch of dusty, drifting light - life found in unusual places. A preview by Lupe Nunez-Fernandez.
There's a chance to see the work of young Russian artist Victor Alimpiev this coming month in both Berlin and Ghent. His films examine the subtleties of human expression and the relationship between the individual and the collective, and are often like performative studies in which the focus is on choreography, mimicry, and rhythm. 
Kay Kaul, who has previously focused his camera on rather more static postmodern sociological 'scapes' - panoramic views constructed in specialised offices and studios - is currently showing 'Chronochrome' in Dusseldorf, a new series in which the motion of water is portrayed as layers of shimmering fact, via the device of multiple exposure and colour translation
Today is the opening of this year's Skulptur Projekte Muenster 07, the fourth edition of the yearly exhibit which will this time offer work by thirty-five international artists, curated by Dr. Brigitte Franzen, Prof. Kasper Konig and Associate Curator Dr. Carina Plath. SPM 07 runs in parallel with documenta, which also opens today, to 30 September.
Not to be missed in Berlin this month is a group show of Dresden's finest young artists, including Christian Korth, a survey show of abstract painting with highlights by American Joanne Greenbaum and the Dutch artist Leo de Goede, installations by Brigit Brenner (below), Rebecca Warren's small neon lit vitrines, and outstanding new sculptures by Bettina Pousttchi. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE'S ROUND-UP OF SHOWS IN BERLIN" »
A call from Vienna came in late yesterday afternoon asking if I might like to attend the Gregor Schneider event at the Staatsoper in Berlin tonight at 7pm. It seemed a bit weird to get a phone call from Vienna asking if I'd like to attend an event in Berlin, and so--ignoring the telepathic signals telling me that there would be "nothing" there--off I went. Uncommonly on-time, even early. I'd missed too many events in my life, this one-time Gregor Schneider event, mysteriously billed as an "one-time-only" event was something that I did not want to miss.
Continue reading "APRIL ELIZABETH LAMM ON GREGOR SCHNEIDER AND 'MADE IN GERMANY'" »
The Polish artist, who represented Poland at the last Venice Biennale, focuses on the theme of work for a new series of videos, trying to give the typical art observer a different perspective on the lives of workers - it is "worthwhile to be interested in this grey cold material, that fills the societal cosmos and snidely is labeled as "mainstream", says Zmijewski. 
A sense of melancholy reflection pervades Erik Niedling's new photographic series, in which, following previous projects tracing the structures of nostalgia for 'what remains', we are asked whether what we see is an abandoned or a found world.
Among the exhibitions not to be missed in Berlin this month are shows by Roman Signer (below), Thomas Hirschhorn, Darren Almond, Bjoern Dahlem, Marjetica Potrc, Elena Bajo and Joe Bradley. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE'S ROUND-UP OF SHOWS IN BERLIN" »
'Last weekend those who were content to explore the already well-worn territory of Berlin - a city for men in makeup - made their 3rd annual spring pilgrimage to the great festival of intellectual joy known as "Gallery-Weekend-Berlin". Party lists were compared, openings were held in bulk. I headed out for round three of galleries on an Arctic-sun Sunday afternoon, after a two-day party blur. 
Continue reading "APRIL ELIZABETH LAMM ON GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN" »
At last week's new fair in Dusseldorf established international galleries such as Alison Jacques, Wilkinson, Spencer Brownstone, Marc Foxx, Casey Kaplan and Konrad Fischer were accompanied by exciting younger galleries including Torch, Raster, Laura Bartlett, MOT and Ratio 3. Matt Price reports on the highlights of the fair. 
Continue reading "MATT PRICE ON THE DUSSELDORF CONTEMPORARY FAIR" »
Alix Rule reports on Jonathan Meese's Easter performance, the seminar-residency programme 'unitednationsplaza', and highlights of the upcoming Gallery Weekend Berlin, including shows by Bjorn Dahlem, Darren Almond, Thomas Hirschhorn, Lea Asja Pagenkemper and an outstanding group show at the artist-run space Artnews Projects (below). 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE ON CURRENT AND UPCOMING ART EVENTS IN BERLIN" »
'Rana', a video portrait by Petra Bauer, is one of the compelling projects mirroring debates facing contemporary society that are included in 'Don't worry, be curious!', the current edition of Ars Baltica Triennial of Photographic Art.
Alix Rule's selection of the 10 shows not to miss in Berlin this month, including Thomas Struth, Sergio Prego, Michal Budny, Laura Horelli and Thorsten Brinkmann (below). 
In 2005 the German artist Gregor Schneider proposed building a black cube in the centre of St Mark's Square for the Venice Biennale. The inspiration for 'Venice Cube 2005' was the Kaba'a, a shrine at the centre of Mecca, which Schneider had learnt about from a Muslim friend. The project was rejected by Italian officials allegedly for political reasons. Two years later the work is finally on view as part of the Hamburger Kunsthalle's exhibition 'Black Square: Hommage a Malevich', which opened last week. At a press conference for the exhibition, Gregor Schneider breathed a sigh of relief, saying, 'The cube has been built. Until now, the cube stood for fear and ignorance.' 
Continue reading "GREGOR SCHNIEDER AT THE HAMBURGER KUNSTHALLE" »
Idris Khan's first solo show in Germany opened this week in Berlin. Khan first attracted attention with his trilogy based on the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher in which Khan superimposed one on top of the other all the photographs of three of the Bechers' architectural types. Khan has since applied this approach to musical scores, key texts on photography, and last year he made his first film, inspired by Bach's Cello Suites. 
Continue reading "IDRIS KHAN AT GALERIE THOMAS SCHULTE, BERLIN" »
Often Lovecraft-tinged art tends toward standard science-fiction imagery and all its gothic gory cliches, but 'The ecstatic truth', a new show at super bien! in Berlin presents two contemporary artists' less obvious tributes to the writer and his concern with the 'weird' in nature, on the 70th anniversary of his death.
Laura Horelli's always been interested in re-configuring 'reality' and in the difference between what we call 'public' and 'private', whether it be by conjuring up stories from personal photographic archives or otherwise re-montaging found image and the statements that they make. For her latest show, the Finnish artist presents her recent video film, a project entitled 'I have been considering making a video about a ski resort in northern Finland and showing it in a gallery in Berlin', a project starring an artist unflinchingly confronting her own art making.
VIDEONALE 11, a festival of contemporary video art, opens tomorrow at the Kunstmuseum Bonn where it will be on view until 15 April. Forty-eight exhibits will be presented at the VIDEONALE including the latest video creations by artists such as Jeanne Faust, Christoph Girardet, Mischa Kuball and Lia Anna Henning (below). During the course of the exhibition we will be featuring videos from VIDEONALE 11 on our new red VIDEO box. 
The unitednationsplaza is a seminar/residency program in the city of Berlin, which is attempting to serve as an alternative to the traditional exhibition space and art school. It will last for just a year and will involve the collaboration of approximately 60 artists, writers, theorists and a wide range of audiences. Yesterday it launched a series of debates and discussions, organised by curator and critic Tirdad Zolghadr (below), which are designed to offer up a forum in which to 'reconsider issues of rhetorics, populism, symposium economics, artworld divisions of labor, postcolonialism and inclusivity, as well as helpful curatorial initiatives, teaching projects and artist interventions'. The free seminars take place in Berlin and are open to anyone. 
Alix Rule's round-up of the 10 best shows currently on in Berlin, including a debut solo show for Thomas Ruff student, Natalie Czech, Martin Meyenburg's architectural art, a video of John Bock's recent opera production, and Berlin's answer to Elizabeth Peyton, Caro Suerkemper. 
Continue reading "ALIX RULE ON IN THE BEST SHOWS IN BERLIN" »
Walking, we become lost. Images of walkers treading through snowy bare woods outside the rules of social convention are a signature element in Martin & Munoz's series of sno-domes, about to be shown in Wiesbaden.
Far and away the most spectacular group show in Berlin right now is at Max Hetzler's temporary gallery in a former warehouse in Wedding. "Kommando Friedrich Holderlin" brings together two formidable groups of German artists - Hetzler's own stable of established artists, including Thomas Struth, Albert Oehlen, Werner Buttner, Gunther Forg, and the most hardcore young German talent, including Thomas Zipp, Erwin Kneisl, Bjoern Dahlem, Thomas Selg, Andreas Hofer, Thilo Heinzmann and Andre Butzer, who has also curated the exhibition. Alix Rule attempted to interview Butzer for this magazine but the 33-year-old painter declined for "personal reasons". Instead he agreed to answer a "questionnaire" about his show, aimed somewhere between a school exam and a quiz from the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine. 
Two weeks after breaking the record for the world's most expensive photograph, Andreas Gursky opened the most comprehensive exhibition of his work to date. One of the first photographers to make large-format pictures, Gursky has gone a stage further for this show by enlarging his images still further - the largest now measure almost 2 metres by 5 metres. Thomas Weski, curator of the exhibition, discusses Gursky's work of the last 20 years. 
Continue reading "ANDREAS GURSKY AT HAUS DER KUNST, MUNICH" »
Alix Rule's top 10 exhibitions currently on in Berlin, including Ricarda Roggan at Eigen + Art, Eve Sussman at the Hamburgerbahnhof, Lara Favaretto at Klosterfelde and Folkert de Jong (below) at Peres Projects. 
Chosen as one of ArtReview's emerging photographers to look out for in 2005, Roggan's latests series looks like another chapter in the artist's inventory of spaces but also stands like a departure, and closure - here all doorways, windows, ceilings and transitions have been blocked, while every trace of soot and wall dust has been left untouched.
The Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin launches on 26 January its screening of 'Rape of the Sabine Women' by the Rufus Corporation under the direction of artist Eve Sussman. The film re-envisions the myth of Romulus as a 1960s period piece with the Romans cast as G-men, the Sabines as butchers' daughters and the heyday of Rome allegorically implied in an affluent international style summer house.
Continue reading "EVE SUSSMAN AT HAMBURGER BAHNHOF, BERLIN" »
The Helmut Newton Foundation presents an unlikely trio in its current exhibition - Newton himself, David LaChapelle and James Nachtwey, three photographers whose work and intentions couldn't be more different but who have been brought together under the all-encompassing exhibition title, 'Men, War and Peace'. 
'The Photographer's Contract', a new exhibition sponsored by the Siemens Art Programme opening in Berlin tomorrow, gives the first ever overview of a very particular branch of portrait photography in contemporary art, one that involves an agreement between the photographer and the person portrayed (photograph by Izima Kaoru).
Around 40 films by artists of different generations, including Bruce Conner, Christian Jankowski, Isaac Julien, Johan Grimonprez, Sarah Morris, Semer Oezmen, Martin Sastre, Sam Taylor-Wood, Francesco Vezzoli, Marijke van Warmerdam und Artur Zmijewski, will be made accessible to the Berlin public in screenings and an archive.
Continue reading "HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE KUNSTFILMBIENNALE KOLN AT THE KW, BERLIN" »
This collaboratively developed exhibition features works by Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Judith Hopf, and Ines Schaber, all addressing themselves to various aspects of the spectral - less a case of rendering specters visible than a question about the circumstances of disappearance and invisibility.
A landmark exhibition opened at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne last Saturday exploring for the first time in a comprehensive way drag and gender, queerness and transsexuality in a forum in which they are allowed to be erotic. 
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