Black holes at REH Kunst
This thing just has to make you smile. Among all the innovative ideas GDR architects have come up with, the Raumerweiterungshalle is certainly one of those that display their practicality best. It is a room that you can stretch or diminish manually as needed: Up to eight segments fit into each other telescopically and form a curvy room, the size of a caravan expandable to a maximum of 82 sqm.
This flexible hall was invented in 1959 by Helmut Both and pretty popular in the GDR wherever sheltered space was needed temporarily. Just last year, a private investor has enabled art historian Valeska Hageney to revive one of them for hosting art shows.
Philip Topolovac at Invaliden1
Generations of archaeologists and monument conservators have thought about the ideal way to preserve artefacts and buildings. In the last century, it was fashionable to reconstruct what seemed to be missing. Nowadays, it is all about doing as little as possible to the remains from the past and keeping them as found. In his current exhibition »Diverse Zimmer« at Invaliden1, Philip Topolovac does both. For his work he collected war-torn artefacts that he discovered on construction sites in the city centre of Berlin, a link to layers of the past that would have been lost otherwise. By placing them on a hybrid of a piece of furniture and a spacecraft, he embeds these untouched story tellers in a new context that builds a bridge between the past and the future. We think it is a really nice comment on all the ongoing discourses about reconstruction here in Berlin. Philip Topolovac shows that there is no necessity to reconstruct the original settings to give the things he has found a meaning. To check this out, join the artist at the closing of his show on January 7th.
Happy new year!
Niche Berlin started 2012 by lighting all the sparklers at once - and wishes you an explosive new year with lots of fantastic art and architecture!
“Das Numen“‘s Transformation
Whenever there’s a sign at the entrance of an art show, warning you to “enter at your own risk,” you can be quite positive that it’s gonna be a hell of a lot of fun.
Build/Unbuild. Yesterday at Program, Kino Satellite and Britta Wagner organized a film screening that revolved around demolishing buildings. Not only contemporary artists like Reynold Reynolds (not to mention Cyprien Gaillard) are dealing with the subject. The footage showed very nicely how early filmmakers (see above a film from 1901) have been fascinated by the force with which a building can be undone. Many of them experimented with reversing the film material, thus making the demolition undone and thus reconstructing the building anew. What is it that we find so appealing about watching and re-watching modern ruin-making?
Adventurous. 2/3 of Niche Berlin spent their Saturday at Teufelsberg.
A short off-guide to Zurich, part II: down by the sea
In part I of this post we introduced alternative art hotspots in Zurich’s Kreis 4 and 5 districts. If you prefer staying close to one of the city’s greatest assets, the lake, there’s one spot you should not miss: The red factory, a former silk mill known as the cultural center Rote Fabrik since 1980. With a truly alternative but also very welcoming and creative vibe, it hosts music venues, theatres, more than 60 artist’s studios, but most of all, the Shedhalle – an institution for contemporary art. A guidance system on the floor leads you to the various venues, also the great café/restaurant called Ziegel oh Lac.
Apart from the Ziegel oh Lac, you will find great food for relatively little money in the Fischers Fritz restaurant just a little further down Seestrasse. You should not miss the great free bathing meadows in Kilchberg as well as the Lindt chocolate factory store, where you will get finest but discounted chocolate.
If you want to return to the city center after having enjoyed lake views, check out the beautiful old fashioned bar La Stanza for drinks (their gin tonic is brilliant). And if on top of all that you feel like watching a movie: RiffRaff is an interesting art house venue with a nice bar as well – on Mondays, their movie night, it’s cheaper. And all movies in Switzerland are being shown in original version, so fear not the language barrier. Enjoy!
Wild Painting
Somebody shot the exhibition’s text with an arrow. It is now stuck to the wall. This archaic gesture marks the entrance to Grimmuseum’s new show. In fact, the works of the Norwegian artist Ingvild Hovland Kaldal and Städel student Alfred Boman that curator Jonatan Ahlm Brenander has gathered here are quite wild. Kaldal’s pieces and found objects sport a mostly arte povera like look, while Boman’s colourful paintings and installations mix colours and shapes of all kinds. Remains this odd vague feeling of familiarity to resolve. It is part of the concept: The show is entitled »Post-war and Contemporary« and asks itself what art of this era needs to be like. In the curator’s opinion, a “hermaphroditic union” of opposites. The result is a crazy show with archaic and hippie like elements – a real feast for the eyes of those who are fed up with minimalism, impalpable and wild like its thematic focus.
In Grimmuseum, the show has found a perfect host. This turn of the century apartment ensemble is itself a union of just about everything possible in a project space: a non commercial platform for visual, performance and sound art, interdisciplinary, experimental, and run solely by artists parallel to their own artistic production under the direction of Enrico Centonze. Since the beginning of 2010, Grimmuseum has organized interesting events like listening salons, performance dinners, and hosted several “pigs” events (an independent art space guide launched in June 2010 by Grim co initiator Despina Stokou) like speed portfolio viewings and curators’ battles.
This week Grimmuseum hosts FITAX1500, an art tradeshow without the involvement of money in cooperation with the Dutch artist group Tupajumi Foundation. Art pieces with an approximate value of 1500 Euros can be traded this Sunday after prior registration. A perfect opportunity for those looking for “an alternative way of wheeling and dealing art during the artfair week” – or for those who are unhappy with their buys on other fairs.
»Post-war and Contemporary« is on view until September 18th, 2011. FITAX1500 works are on view starting today and will be traded on September 11th. Sign up here: http://www.tupajumi.com/fitaxberlin/
Credit: Ingvild Hovland Kaldal and Alfred Boman, Post-war and Contemporary © Laura Gianetti 2011
Revolutionary Aesthetics
Canvases painted by bomb-defusing robots, a massive barricade sculpted in bronze or a water canon ballet – by combining classical media and militant context Spanish artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo creates beautifully contradictory works. There’s obviously nothing subtle about his oeuvre – as there’s no subtext to the exhibition they’re featured in. Because the group show »Die Revolution im Dienste der Poesie« at Senatsreservenspeicher riots against the Berlin Kunstherbst.
But the show does not content itself with aestheticizing power instruments and riot accessories. Castillo and his Spanish compatriots Democracia and Santiago Sierra present critical works that question the interdependence of power and aesthetics. From the graphics of grand provocateur Santiago Sierra to Democracia’s video of a nocturnal parkour session on a cemetery, everything is about clear statements and confronting the public. (The prints of Sierra’s war veterans are to be found at Schlesisches Tor and Oberbaumbrücke, too.) And there could not be a more suitable setting for this provocative show than the impressive concrete colossus Senatsreservenspeicher. The former food provision storage in Kreuzberg serves as an exhibition space of Artitude e.V. which for almost a decade has earned its name for its multidisciplinary approach and, more important, idiosyncratic way of connecting art establishment and subculture through concerts, workshops, parties and fantastic exhibitions.
Of course Artitude-director Lutz Henke and co-curator Ulf Saupe don’t content with a static exhibition. On display until the end of October the show will not only be complemented by numerous interventions and performances, but the participating artists will also realize new site-specific projects in Berlin. You’d better be vigilant.
»Die Revolution im Dienste der Poesie« is on view until October 3rd, 2011.
Credit: Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Stilleben, 2009, Lambda-Print 80x110
Naturally, see you tonight at Bel Etage
»In Our Nature« is the latest project of the series BEL ETAGE which since 2009 has been regularly appearing at different sites all over town. This time it’s a group exhibition on the medium of video projections at the Charlottenburger 800QM. BEL ETAGE initiator and curator Renata Kaminska chose 12 artists, among which Alicja Kwade, Thomas Zipp and Marc Bijl, whose works deal with the tension between civilization und nature, with mankind as a natural hazard and the obsession of our culture with the four elements fire, air, water, earth.
On display at 800QM (Marburger Straße 3) until September 11, 2011.
Credit: Bel Etage
