NICHE Art & Architecture Tours Berlin Blog

Review: one more Gallery Weekend recommendation by the Niche Berlin Team

Sat, 11 May 2013 10:06:43 +0200

Today is the perfect day to catch up on all the shows your missed during Gallery Weekend. One of our most experienced guides, Sandra Teitge, recommends Klara Hobza at Heike Tosun’s gallery Soy Capitán, which recently moved to a great new location in Kreuzberg:

“German artist Klara Hobza is ‘Diving through Europe’ (2010-35), from Rotterdam to the Black Sea. Like a nautical flaneur, Hobza observes sea life and sporadically comes across fellow sea voyageurs, like a container ship, an encounter that gave inspiration for the exhibition at Soy Capitán called ‘Der Totale Horror.’ Hobza escaped death only by a mere hair’s breadth. But she will continue her journey, mirroring her alleged main influence, semi-obsessive film director Werner Herzog.”

Soy Capitán, Prinzessinnenstr. 29, 10969 Berlin, Wed to Sat 12-6 pm

“Der Totale Horror” will be on view until June 8th.

And this is Sandra’s self portrait, which goes to show with how much creativity she tackles her Niche Berlin tours:

Gallery Weekend with the Niche Berlin Team, no. 4

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:42:00 +0200

Highly recommended by Niche co-founder Stefanie:

“Between all the things you will be able to SEE this weekend, there is one installation that you explicitly cannot see, just hear — and that will thus be ‘overlooked’ by numerous people, but is all the more worth to get some attention on this blog.

It is Ari Benjamin Meyers’ sound piece Chamber Music (vestibule) which opens tonight at 5 pm at Berlinische Galerie, curated by Christina Landbrecht, who is a former trainee at this museum. You will be able to hear it in the vestibule of the Berlinische, where it will be ‘trapped’ right between the two entrance doors, just like the term vestibule is trapped between two brackets in the title. This is also taken as a starting point for the invitation design, in which two empty brackets emphasize the invisibility of this sound piece. But it is not so inivisible after all: Every time the doors close as someone walks in or through, the piece will skip back to the beginning. This makes for a conceptual, performative aspect of the work: On a regularly busy day, with lots of people walking through, you might linger around and still never make it to the end of the 7 minute long piece.

Meyers composed a piece that is based on Henry Purcell’s baroque opera Dido and Aneas. In the original aria “When I am laid in earth”, Dido, knowing that she will die, asks not to be forgotten: “remember me” is a recurring line, that Meyers adapts for Camber Music (vestibule). Meyers lets the soprano soloist Nicole Chevalier try to remember that aria by humming and singing that line. What a complex thing to say to museum visitors!

I am really curious to see how people will react to the piece, if they will notice it at all, stay to listen or take that initial sound of the aria with them into the museum, maybe a bit more sensitized for the art to come. The piece will be up for one whole year in the museum entrance, and I am sure that once it will be taken down, we will all miss that siren call dearly, that lured us into the Berlinische Galerie for such a long time. Surely, we will remember it.”

28.04.2013 - 28.04.2014, Berlinische Galerie, Alte Jakobstraße 124-128

Opening at Gallery Weekend Berlin
27.04.2013 5 - 8pm

Artist Talk during Berlin Art Week
Ari Benjamin Meyers with Christina Landbrecht, in English, free entry
22.09.2013 11am

Gallery Weekend with the Niche Berlin Team, no. 2

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:27:00 +0200

Ph.D. candidate at Humboldt University, guide for Niche Berlin and freelance curator – Christina Landbrecht is definitely gifted when it comes to time management. Last night she was at Thomas Fischer gallery: Dirk Braeckman is her recommendation for the Gallery Weekend.

“The Belgian photographer Dirk Braeckman is still an open secret. At least in Germany: In Belgium he’s quite a star. With his show at Thomas Fischer Gallery, there’s hope that this is due to change.

The interesting part about Braeckman’s photographs of surfaces, interiors, ornaments, people and landscapes is this: you’re literally drawn into them and at the same time you’re strangely repelled. That’s the mystery surrounding his works. The closer you get to decipher them the more disconcerted the act of viewing becomes. You start to feel that there’s something you’ll never quite understand about these images.

Dirk Braeckman, S.C.-G.E.-98, Courtesy the artist & Thomas Fischer gallery

But how does he do that? That is a question which you’re even more entitled to ask since the motives seem at first so well in order, so attractive, almost haptically, that you find yourself easily lost in Braeckman’s handling of reflections and fuzziness as well as the texture and color of the photographs.

His secret, I guess, has to do with the way he plays with opposites. Braeckman’s pictures look arranged yet weirdly cramped and even though they seem somehow unfinished they’re too big to not know that every odd detail is well calculated. They’re in themselves ambiguous enough that this ambiguity reflects onto the way you look at them.

Really spooky and absolutely brilliant at the same time.”

Dirk Braeckman, P.H.-N.N.-11, Courtesy the artist & Thomas Fischer gallery, Berlin

Galerie Thomas Fischer, Potsdamerstraße 77-78, Berlin-Tiergarten

Christina Landbrecht. Foto: Fabian Frost

GALLERY WEEKEND WITH THE NICHE BERLIN TEAM, NO. 3

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:27:00 +0200

Besides running the coolest among the newcomer art spaces in Berlin, Import Projects, with Nadim Samman, Anja is an excellent tour guide. She knows what’s going in the art world – and tonight she wants to go and see Jodie Carey!

“Artist Jodie Carey’s exhibition Immemorial opens tonight at Gallery Rolando Anselmi curated by Manuel Wischnewski, the force behind Neue Berliner Raeume.

Jodie Carey finds her inspiration in her exploration of life’s fragility and its brevity as well as the resonance and meaning that materials can evoke in sculpture. Through a clever use of material, such as the hand weaving of photographs, she is able to create a truly compelling show.

Jodie Carey, installation view, untitled (slabs), 2012, Courtesy the artist

Jodie Carey, Elegy, 2012, digital print from glass plate negative ca. 1920 (framed) 37 x 40 cm, Courtesy the artist

She has shown her ability to evoke a strong response in the viewer with her current show at London’s exciting emerging gallery Edel Assanti which is currently showing her work until the 11th of May.

I am very excited to be able to recommend this exhibition, which opens tonight. See you all there!”

Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Erkelenzdamm 11-13 (2. Hof, Aufgang C, 3. Etage), Berlin - Kreuzberg

Also don’t miss: Mathew gallery: Love is Still Colder than Capital , Klosterfelde: Jorinde Voigt 9 Times Philosophy, Future gallery: Jon Rafman Annals of Time Lost, Alexander Levy gallery: Julius von Bismarck Unfall am Mittelpunkt Deutschlands

New series: Gallery Weekend with the Niche Berlin Team, no. I

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:45:29 +0200

Gallery Weekend is work and fun at the same time. Like everyone, we want to see as much as possible. But instead of just giving you our personal recommendations, we decided to yield the floor to our Niche Berlin Guides: We asked our team to share their personal highlights with you.

Christian Müller’s answer came immediately: Despina Stokou’s show Delusions of Grandeur at Krobath!

Despina Stokou, George B, 2013, 150 x 200cm, mixed material on canvas, Courtesy the artist and Krobath Wien/Berlin 2013

Christian writes: »The opening reception of the berlin-based greek artist Despina Stokou at Krobath is my top favourite recommendation at this year’s Gallery Weekend. Her collage-like, colourful, nearly variegated pictures, which mostly transmit some sort of a more or less personal message, on a textual level and not in a figurative or coded form, are, from my perspective, breathtakingly exciting. These paintings correspond to the many layers and stories of the artist-personality Despina Stokou. She is not only an artist, but a curator, editor, jack-of-all-trades and - other than most of the diverse participants of this vanity fair, she’s got a strong opinion and she speeks it out aloud, standing in for it. Doing that in berlin’s art-scene-circle, natural habitat of myriads of hypocrites and toadies, I owe her my respect.«

We couldn’t agree more.

Galerie Krobath, Marienstraße 10, Berlin - Mitte

Opening: Friday, April 26th, 2013, 4-9 pm

Foto: Laura Gianetti

Berlin has a new thing: Berlin Art Prize

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:28:00 +0200

Listen up, all you ambitious Berlin-based artists out there. If you felt like the “Macht Kunst!” KunstHalle campaign by Deutsche Bank wasn’t quite right for you, but you still wouldn’t mind a bit more fuzz about your work – we’ve got news for you! Berlin has a new art prize. An independent one. It’s called Berlin Art Prize, as simple as that, and you can still apply until May 1st.

From left to right: Zoe Claire Miller (artist), Sophie Jung (art historian), Alicia Reuter (art critic), Ulrich Wulff (artist). Credit: Peter Langer

The artists Zoe Claire Miller and Ulrich Wulff, the art historian Sophie Jung and the art critic Alicia Reuter felt like making a change in Berlin’s art world. Berlin has lots of art prizes, but none of them seemed to be reflecting the city’s potential, and none of them was really independent of bigger companies or institutions. So they thought of a system, set up a network of helpers and got together a jury, which will award prizes in three different categories, all without seeing the artist’s names, education or exhibition history. There will be an exhibition and a publication and probably the best thing about this is that you can win a two week mini residency in a private villa in Umbria, Italy. Without internet. With the other recipients. And with prize money.

The application process is really easy. Do it. You won’t have to stand in line for hours for this.

Evolutionary art fiction

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:01:00 +0200

When was the last time you had to do with a laid-back exhibition concept? That’s why we enjoyed the show conceived by Simon Elson and Christian Ganzenberg at Kuckei + Kuckei so much. The Evolution of Art. 1830 - 2140 claims to present a distinctive moment in the development of artists David Barbarino, Zander Blom, Madeleine Boschan, Bettina Krieg, Denis Mähne, Adolph Menzel and Ulrich Wulff – with the juxtaposition of an early piece and a recent work allowing »a glance from the present to the past as well as to the future«.

The show itself is a little stiff – and how could it not be, with this juxtaposition? But the pretense of continuous characteristics resulted in a fabulous publication: a booklet of fictional art criticism, combining artist´s interviews with science fiction. Read the interview with Dr. Nils Güttler, Historian of Science at the University of Erfurt, and our favorite curatorial duo Simon Elson and Christian Ganzenberg.

Nils Güttler: Let’s not pretend we don’t know each other. So I can be frank, I guess.

Simon Elson: Please!

Güttler: Why are you doing this?!

Christian Ganzenberg: We wanted to show a distinctive moment in the development of seven artists. We display two works by each artist, one early piece and a recent one, so …

Güttler: Well, thanks. I did read the ‘press release.’ My question is: Why exploit the concept of evolution for a gallery show of — with the exception of Adolph Menzel — very young artists?

Elson: I don’t really understand your point here.

Güttler: You just show early and recent works of an artist, right? For example David Barbarino, you show a certain movement in his style, in his approach to painting. First the victims heads in realistic fashion. Now the huge silver post-post-modern painting, that battles reality not on the depicting canvas, but as an object in its own right.

Ganzenberg: Yes!

Güttler: But that’s development! Like you said it yourself. Evolution is something completely different. Evolution is not a personal intimate concept, it’s a huge historical or biological or social shift, that alters a certain way of life.

Elson: Sounds great! I never thought about that!

Ganzenberg: Sounds great, though … Maybe our goal is just to show such a huge shift in a personal dimension. Like a hurricane observed with a microscope. No. That’s bullshit. It’s exactly the other way around: Like the smallest ripple on the surface, observed with a huge atomic microscope.

Elson: Right. And this microscope has a name, it’s the blatant term “evolution of art”. It’s not our term. We stole it from the art writer Julius Meier-Graefe. He’s a bigmouth. So we wanted to be like him.

Güttler: But still …

Ganzenberg: In the end, its about the art, anyway. The concept is just fun. The title is fun. But art’s eternal features are not as easy to bear!

The Evolution of Art. 1830 - 2140 is on display through April 20, 2013 at Kuckei + Kuckei , Linienstraße 158, Berlin-Mitte.

Photos:

1. Adolph Menzel, zugeschrieben: Pflanzenstudien (Gemeine Akelei und Anemonen). 1830.  Watercolour on paper,  20,5 x 15,4 cm,  Courtesy Christoph Müller.

2. & 3. Installation views of works by Zander Blom and Madeleine Boschan in The Evolution of Art. 1830 - 2140, Kuckei + Kuckei, Berlin 2012

FORT for sale

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 01:05:00 +0100

In the middle of January, Martin Kwade asked us to host one of his notorious Artist Nights at King Size Bar. (You can read about our friend W’s impression of that night here.) The concept is simple: The beer is cheaper that night, only 2,50 Euros. That gets the arty crowd to hang out there on Wednesdays. Including us. To emphasize the special beer deal, an artist gets asked to contribute a sign stating that price.

FHW - Fort Hatchery Works, 2010

We asked FORT to do it. Although they only had a couple of hours to think about it, they came up with an idea that was.. both smart and fun. Typical for FORT. FORT is a young artist collective that consists of three girls, just like Niche: Anna Jandt, Jenny Kropp and Alberta Niemann. We went to see them in their studio, and it turns out that ideas are all they produce there: Most of their artworks are site specific interventions. We already knew their project FHW – Fort Hatchery Works (2010), for which they invented a parallel production line in a working power station in Neukölln. You could book a tour through the plant and had to judge by yourself whether what you saw was real or part of the exquisitely absurd parallel story.

FORT’s first collaboration, for which they transformed a former customs station in the harbor of Bremen (where they all met) into a surreal hotel in 2008, was so successful, that KW curator Susanne Pfeffer asked them to do something similar for a new project in Berlin: Hotel Marienbad. Since then they have been continuously coming up with interventions that implement absurdity into everyday life, like creating an irritating, looping tableau vivant in front of Lena Brüning’s Gallery (The Golden Rule, 2010) or hiding behind the curtain at Liste 16 Art Fair at Exile’s booth with only their toecaps showing (The Eye Balled Walls, 2011) – or vice versa: The jury inspection of the Schmitt-Rotluff artistic grant found the three artists lying on the floor in front of a white wall, simply having put up a little sign stating FORT 2012 and the amount and type of sleeping pills they had swallowed (Low Lid, 2012). What a great way to withdraw from the whole art scene craze.

Low Lid, 2012, picture: Marcin Polak

In the same line of thought, for our Artist Night commission, they came up with the best way to connect the requirement of making a price board with a slightly cynical comment. They simply claimed King Size Bar by putting up a “FOR SALE” sign. The little line saying that Artist Night beer was 2,50 Euros was dominated by the huge red letters pretending that the bar hype was over, the bar was being sold. (Thanks to the crew for playing along!)

The bottom line is: You should keep your eyes open. In two ways: You should look out for these girls. FORT is nominated amongst other things for the Zurich Art Prize this year, so this is not the last you will be seeing of them. And the next time you stumble into something absurd, before you freak out, double check if it could be an intervention by FORT.

But who knows, you might even be able to buy King Size Bar for real.

Just a little flashback – missing the white city.

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:32:46 +0100

All we can think about right now is warmth. The lower the temperatures drop, the bigger grows our homesickness. It’s been a month since we got back from Israel, but we can’t wait for a reason to return. Fortunately, we know there remains a lot to be discovered – whether morbidly decaying Bauhaus-buildings or art spaces that wait to be visited. If we were in Tel Aviv right now…

This is what we’d catch up on:

Check out the exhibition at Sommer Contemporary – sadly, we arrived in between two exhibitions – or the program of non-profit initiative Givon Art Forum in Neve Tzedek. It also seems to be one more example of all the masterful renovations downtown Tel Aviv. Actually, the limited space in the centre of the once generously planned city results amongst other in a zoning law, which permits developers to build skyscrapers in the former gardens of historic properties in exchange for their renovation – which can look rather absurd.

Not yet renovated and thus even more interesting is the initiative Rothschild 69. The Bauhaus building is soon to be renovated by R2M group (which runs several popular cafes, restaurants – and soon another boutique hotel). In the meantime the ground floor is being used as an art space curated by Noam Segal. And the upper floors have been allocated to the initiators of 2011 tents demonstration, who since fight against rising rents and increasingly scarce housing. They host all kind of workshops, talks and events. Both, the show downstairs, but also the upper rooms looked fascinating!

That’s what we’d do – again:

Explore the White City over and over – and rest at The Helena Rubinstein Pavillon, which back then presented David Claerbout with videoworks like the beautiful The Algiers’ Sections of a Happy Moment (2008). The low-slung construction by Jacob Rechter opened in 1959 as an extension of the first Tel Aviv Museum of Art and predecessor of the big complex erected in 1971. And we definitely preferred the spacious open-plan exhibition space (1,200 square meters) divided into four interconnected exhibition floors – open staircases contribute to the sense of unbroken space – to the newest, contorted wing of the TAM.

And one trip we definitely have to repeat:

After our detour to En Gedi, where we hiked in the oasis, floated in the Dead Sea and showered under gigantic mushrooms, we engaged in heavy sightseeing of the Old-Town, some of it’s sacred surroundings and managed to visit holocaust-memorial site Yad Vashem. (Did you know you could charge your fridge magnets with holiness? Well, people do so in The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.) Unfortunately we didn’t even see half of the fabulous, gigantic Israel Museum and needed to recover with some delicious long drinks at 5th of May, a gem of a cafe in bustling Machane Yehuda market. We left with the resolution to return in spring and see the museum sections we’ve missed out on, but also the newer parts of Jerusalem.

So here we are in Berlin, waiting for spring!

To Visit A Place You Know Nothing About.

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:12:09 +0100

I know there’s an ‘art scene’ there – I’ve fingered a magazine subtitled Kunst und Kultur. I’ve read the history, and I’ve watched some films: I’ve maintained the occurrence of ostalgie in the Nouvelle Vague Allemande of the late 1990’s. I’ve even given a bar-side Faust synopsis to a swooning (I dream?) co-ed (Spoiler Alert –starved of the real thing, Gretchen will take no pity lay in the end). But what has any of this got to do with the actual place? Nothing.

Not nothing, I fumble – something. But it is not Berlin. Berlin is something else.

I came, like Caesar, to party. Arriving in time for Artist’s Night at King Size Bar, an aptly named pricey dive. (Irony! The bar is small enough, and only in Berlin could it be called anything but cheap). The affair was raucous. The music was boisterous. And the drinks went coursing down. I’ve bounced to Biggie with 300 bilingual hipsters. Now I can die.

Predictably, the morning to follow was mostly missed. Not that I’ll miss it. And it was on the wrinkly end of midday that we broke the airlock and stumbled into the cold. For some reason I pictured frozen soldiers in paper blankets, their icy shapes camouflaged in the snow. But it was not Berlin. It was just me being dramatic: my own penchant for the macabre crassly juxtaposed onto the day.

We walked through Mitte. Through some lauded corridors. An island of museums. Down a long and corporate boulevard that could have been anywhere – bisecting the day – to arrive at Brandenburger Tor, and proceed through it. And over the Wall that is now cobblestones in the ground. There was a cold park as elegant as pure winter and then suddenly we stood amongst the looming titans of government. The cold-kalt whipped I’m sure, but the air was still as the yonder bells whose tones I’ve never heard.

What is real, I wonder. What is Berlin. My guide (K), my friend, continues to rattle names of people who built the city. And their stories, and other stories. Well done, I think. Hard at work. It is all pertinent. This guide deals not in drivel. But I will not remember those names, only the buildings and their faces. Who made their faces is like god to me, and I’ve yet to say I believe.

Back at my lodging and the rhythm of the day lulls me into a siesta.

That night we’re out again, but intimately this time, with one other friend (N). I’ve laughed harder, and had a better time, I am sure. But really I don’t know when.

N – ‘The drinks here are so good.’

K – ‘Yes. And two is really all you need.’

Myself – ‘I see.’

N – ‘I once had five.’

M – ‘Wow.’

K – ‘Yes.’

The cocktails appear in little frozen glassware. Two are brown, chilled, in the whiskey family. The third is yellow, rocks.

N – ‘I am so bad with people’s names.’

M – ‘Oh god. I’m the worst. All I can remember is faces.’

K – ‘I can usually remember names, and faces.’

M – ‘Then how do you know which is which?’

This conversation actually happened. Next time I’ll have five.

Something like love is floating around Berlin. Snow billows out from the tramway tracks. This time of year the air in the sky lingers in the city and children on wooden sleds descend the open parks on slopes as gentle as the young men and women they become. Those men and women for whom laughter happens at night, when the toys become friendship and the other things that make it real, when the youth are not quite ready to not be young. Even as the slight leaves of the linden trees pop and quiver and fall again and again. So marks a year, where in Berlin is perhaps a day.

Before Parliament the history and the scandal and even the names of the craftsmen who dreamt of these places do not seem as real as a chance to drink a beer from a stout round bottle; as real as the workman who holler through the cold at one another. At toil amid the frozen shore beside the Spree. They who are realer still than the castles and bridges they build.

You could stroll through the market once or a thousand times and never know the difference. But to never go to Berlin, to never have been there, then we could never know it’s real. And it is real.

Photos: Niche Berlin, BASK Architekten, Stil in Berlin

Makeover for your walls: young art auction

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 14:09:00 +0100

Look around you. Could your walls use some new artworks? Of course. For any real art lover, the answer to that is always “yes”. No matter how tight on cash.

Here’s some help: The auction house De Joode & Kamutzki is hosting an auction tonight in cooperation with our friends from Berlin Art Link, giving away 42 pieces by young artists like Sinta Werner and Cécile B. Evans to the highest bidder. The starting prices are very fair – a beautiful work on paper by Katharina Fengler, for example, starts at only 50 Euros.

Here are the details: Sunday, January 27th, 2013 at Karl Marx Allee 78, 10243 Berlin (above the beautiful former Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung). The auction will start at 7pm, the door opens at 6pm.

And the good news for all our readers overseas are: The auction will take place simultaneously in Berlin and New York City via live stream video and remote bidding.

Check out the catalog before going and bring home some love.

Easy Going in Tel Aviv

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 11:10:17 +0100

Hello 2013. Here we are – again. Some of us spent the turn of the year in Israel. Of course we fell in love with Tel Aviv, couldn’t get enough of the beautiful white city and can’t wait to return in summer. Next time we will explore the city more thoroughly, so far all these restaurants and bars where one can enjoy incredible hummus, great seafood and very good drinks gave the cultural tourist in us a hard time. So let’s start laid-back by sharing some spots that seriously cheered us up after a grey Berlin December.

From Yaffa port to downtown Tel Aviv beachfront

If hung-over after drinks at Port Said (2 Har Sinai) begin the day with the notorious humus breakfast at Abu Hassan (1 Dolphin Street) in Jaffa – where even the rather impatient Israelis queue for a table. Jaffa is an old port city. Winding streets and small houses testify of its Arab legacy. In recent years, parts of the old town have been restored. It now attracts both: young locals and tourists who chill in numerous small cafés around the Ottoman-era flea market and enjoy the almost overly tidy port area. Don’t miss the delicious Kalamata (Kedumim Square).

Then take your time to stroll down the promenade all the way to downtown Tel Aviv. Amidst the gigantic yet fascinating hotel atrocities and embassies to be found on the way, the Dan Hotel is pure beauty. The rainbow-coloured, yet elegant modernist building is an outstanding example of Tel Aviv’s second, late modernism building wave of the 1950’s.

Once you make it to the marina, concrete lovers will be rewarded by delightful 1980’s arrangements.

P.S.: Not too far from the beach is another personal highlight of ours: Barbounia (192 Ben Yehuda) – a delicious seafood restaurant where we had excellent fish! And again, the locals queued. We made you a list with our favourite food places.

P.S.: Tiny, but cool club: Michatronix (26 Ben Yehuda)

Photographs: Leonie Pfennig

Wishlist

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 14:13:47 +0100

The closer we get to Christmas the more we’re obsessing about potential presents. We somehow managed to see some of the latest shows though, like Stecklingsvermehrung (cutting propagation) by Diana Sirianni. Only to find that it beautifully reflected our scattered state of mind: Figge von Rosen gallery is sewn with what looks like the remains of an exploded artwork.

Diana Sirianni, Wildwuchs I, 2012, @Courtesy Figge von Rosen, Berlin 2012

The installation Wildwuchs (“proliferation”) spreads all over the exhibition space. It consists of innumerable bits of paint, cardboard, foil, paper, plexiglass, silicone rubber, wood and nylon thread - and is constantly altered. The actual cuttings (I-IX) consist of collages; the nine reliefs are based on installation shots of a work the artist had previously realized in the gallery space. Contemplating the pieces (not overly expensive, but still pricy for a young artist), we were reminded of our main mission: gifts!

Consider this a little art shopping guide with affordable pieces. For yourself, your loved ones – or us! Just in case you don’t know what to get us for Christmas.

At Helga Maria Klosterfelde we got amazed by Ulrike Heise’s Spülsaum (“wash fringe”) (2012, edition of 7). It consists of small fragments of coast, covered with mussels and fragments of plants the tide has washed ashore. Heise has added tiny bit’s of amber – amber swims in salt water and can be found at the Baltic see especially after storms glittering in the sun light.

Ulrike Heise, Spülsaum, 2012, Edition: 7, I,I,I © Courtesy Helga Maria Klosterfelde, Berlin 2012

A bit less pricy, but nonetheless exquisite are the booklets by Fiete Stolte you can order at Sassa Trülzsch’s. The series of unique pieces is inspired by his multipage work BOOK (2012), which was written by visitors turning the pages. Their fingerprints caused corrosion on the zinc sheets. On the small version, done in etching technique, you find the artist’s fingerprints.

Fiete Stolte, Unitled, 2012, unique pieces © Courtesy Sassa Trülzsch, Berlin 2012

And then there are some charming options at Magasin Souvenir, like the beautiful pieces by Juliane Solmsdorf (Untitled 1 (2012), which come in an edition of 10 or Temporary Tattoos (2012) by Marc Brandenburg (edition of 50).

Juliane Solmsdorf, Untitled 1, 2012, Edition: 10 © Courtesy Magasin Souvenir, Berlin 2012

Little investment, big joy: Order brilliant Paradiso Magazine including the giant, new poster (edition of 40) at post@paradisomagazin.com

But beware, we’re just started scanning the multitude of available editions, springing up everywhere this year. (See FAZ-article on the usual suspects). Tell us, what is your favourite edition? What have you seen lately you liked?

Anyways, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

A brief interview with Adina Popescu – on the occasion of her exhibition Solid States

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:22:00 +0200

Simon: Congrats to your first solo exhibition Solid States, Adina! I especially like that the displayed pieces have a very dark touch, even an evil quality about them. The sculpture ensemble, the film and the sound installation are truly beautiful, but dark and highly complex at the same time. You may have explained some things in your exhibition text, but I still have questions.  Starting with the film Jeremiah: You worked with the German actor Clemens Schick. Why did you change the color of his piercing eyes from blue to green?

Adina: Hmm – I guess I wanted him to be a highly artificial character- nothing naturalistic. So I basically color corrected the entire film frame by frame. Jeremiah is wearing a silly blue bow tie, so I colored his eyes green, as I wanted to create a dissonance in the image.

 S: Why did you choose to illuminate your sculptures Solid State I, II & III like you did, in this very gloomy theatrical way?

A: I did not really plan on making sculptures, but again, to create an artificial, somehow unlivable, fictional space, for Jeremiah to ‘live’ in. I do not feel that I lit the sculptures so much, as I tried to theatrically light a darkened space, in which an incident might or might not have taken place. An incident that escapes the eye and that is connected to the quality of the interior, a criminology so to speak.

The steel that has been displayed on the floor takes the shape of an architectural drawing of a room. I was interested in showing an abstraction, just the outline of an hypothetical interior that feels artificial and dead (steel, plastics) at the same time. 

S: For the sound installation 2014 you worked with the Sportpalast-Rede of Joseph Goebbels. What is your fascination with his language?

A: I am interested in manipulation. Light, editing, sound and a certain use of language serve as a very basic structure to all forms of manipulation as can be found in advertising, cinema and propaganda. This basic language has not changed too much since the beginning of media. I realized that if I make an index of 8 keywords and replace them with the key words in Goebbels’ text, the outcome is a truly contemporary political speech. 

S: But: Why is the sound installation called „2014“?

A: It’s the future ———-

S: Ah, OK. Thank you!

Interview: Simon Elson

Solid States at Galerie Plan B is up until October 20th.

Galeria Plan B | Potsdamer Strasse 77 - 87 | 10785 Berlin

2: Adina Popescu, Solid State II, 2012, raw steel, car paint

3: Adina Popescu, Solid State III, 2012, raw steel, car paint, MDF, acrylic paint

1,4,5: Installation views Solid States, Galerie Plan B, Berlin 2012

Book your Guided abc Tour Now!

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:54:01 +0200

We are offering art tours at the abc!

From September 14 – 16 there are going to be Daily Tours at 3 p.m. (fee 5 €).
You also have the chance to book an individual Group Tour (max. 10 Persons, 75 € per group).

Don’t miss your chance and book your tour now! Email to: tours@artberlincontemporary.com

Niche presents: Artists we are looking forward to, part II – Marcel Frey

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 16:48:14 +0200

We’re looking forward to stumble into the installation of artist Marcel Frey (*1980), presented by Thomas Fischer gallery. Besides sculptures, casts and prints, Frey’s works involve common concrete tiles arranged on the floor, which might turn into fun obstacles on a crowded fair.

Marcel Frey’s artworks are based on found everyday objects, which were once omnipresent in middle-class households but are now mostly discredited as “bad taste”. The artist revives these ceramics, accessories or textiles by slightly re-arranging them or using them as models for casts and prints. The utensils remain vaguely familiar and might recall some personal memories of older people’s homes – but Frey’s installations reach a degree of abstraction that highlights the aesthetic quality of the objects. A simple side table thus becomes a sculpture, and takes part in a spatially complex and symbolically charged installation. Frey not only blurs the border between the ordinary and the sphere of art. He also questions the limits of design – if not decision making in cultural production in general. The artist creates new sculptures out of the discarded formal disposition the objects initially offer. His prints and casts are complex studies of materiality. He then arranges the resulting artworks into an even denser exhibition context. The beauty of Frey’s oeuvre lies in his minimal intervention – the utility of the object disappears behind its artistic value, but the beholder’s relation to it becomes part of the work.

For this year’s abc, Marcel Frey will assemble a new installation. And we’re more than curious to see how it will cope with the new fairground exhibition design by Manuel Raeder – based on existing or recyclable structures.

Picture: Marcel Frey, Untitled (2012) wood, glass, 100 x 120 x 75 cm. Courtesy Galerie Thomas Fischer, Berlin

dOCUMENTA (13): In Conclusion

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 11:47:48 +0200

dOCUMENTA(13) is almost over. In several visits we managed to discover quite a lot – albeit not everything. Yes, it’s been impressive. But we’re far from being at one with each other about whether we found it brilliant or a bit too zeitgeisty (animism, urban gardening, Afghanistan). Either way, we’ve seen many, many good art works. And each trip was definitely more than worth it. For those who still haven’t paid their visit yet – here’s our final shortlist of contributions not to be missed. In previous reviews we’ve already highlighted works such as Theaster Gates’ 12 Ballads for the Huguenot House (2012), Tino Seghal’s performance This Variation (2012) or Geoffrey Farmer’s installation Leaves of Grass (2012) at Neue Galerie. Besides these, our very personal “must-sees” are the following:

Andrea Büttner, Little Sisters: Luna Park Ostia (2012) Photograph Sune Berg

It’s one of the more discreet works at Neue Galerie, but Andrea Büttner’s multi-media installation Little Sisters: Luna Park Ostia (2012) is at the same time sober – if not slick –, delicate and reflective. It’s based on the artist’s research on a religious order in an amusement park near Rome and questions the negligence of immaterial properties in a superficial capitalist environment through various artistic strategies, such as a video showing layers of moss, a slide show about the nun’s every-day activities, illustrations of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement.

The Worldly House, compiled by Tue Greenfort (2012) Photograph Roman März

In the back of Karlsaue hides a little treasure in the guise of a shack.The Worldly House is an archive compiled and presented by Tue Greenfort. The artist filled the former bird-house (once installed for swans, now inhabited by racoons) with texts, books and videos that allow the visitor to engage with Donna Haraway’s ideas on the »multi-species co-evolution«. We could have spent hours in front of the computers containing documentation on art works dealing with the relationship of human and other beings. Aesthetically, Tacita Dean’s work Fatigues (2012) in the former tax office is a highlight: The artist covered the interior walls with monumental blackboard-drawings. The work consists of beautiful wintery mountain and sea sceneries about the annual snowmelt in the surroundings of Kabul, inspired by footage the artist commissioned from an Afghan cameraman.

Tacita Dean, Fatigues (2012) Photograph Nils Klinger

Omar Fast, Continuity (2012) Photograph Nils Klinger

Haris Epaminonda and Daniel Gustav Cramer installed their own meta show: The End of Summer (2012) is a mysterious, unusual take on vacation, exotic places and the adventures of travelling. Its minimalist and abstract aesthetic is quite opposed to the rather opulent imagery sometimes found in dOCUMENTA (13) and got us thinking about alternative ways of installing art works. On top, the attic of their space (the stationmaster’s former apartment in the train station) bears a magnificent treasure for you to discover. We need not say more about Omer Fast’s much-talked about film Continuity (2012), but we have to admit that it surprised us as well and left a lasting impression.  For the art historians among us, the use of images in Mario Garcia Torres’ Have You Ever Seen The Snow? (2010) was delightful and illuminating. His research on Alighiero Boetti’s Hotel One in Kabul is artistic research par excellence: A picture essay analysis totally dependent on found images. 

Mario Garcia Torez, Have You Ever Seen The Snow? (2010) Photograph Roman März

Finally, Walid Raad’s lecture performance in his installation Scratching on Things I Could Disavow (2007-ongoing) enthralled us: The Lebanese artist meticulously researched the interrelations between the art world and economic circles and already had us believing that the latter dominate every thinkable artistic decision, just to puzzle us again and demonstrate in a very poetic way how when it all comes down to it, lines, forms, shapes and colours live their own, autonomous little life, and not even times of crises can take that away from them. What better way to end a visit of dOCUMENTA (13)?

Waalid Raad, Scratching on Things I Could Disavow (2007-ongoing) Photograph Sune Berg

All photographs Courtesy dOCUMENTA (13)

ABC 2012: Artists we are looking forward to, part I – Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 13:59:00 +0200

This year’s abc art berlin contemporary asked the participating galleries to submit positions the organizers could choose works from. Together, we want to share some of Niche’s favourites.

Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs

We love the way Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs (both *1979) comment on the phenomenon that almost every text about photography cites the same few authors, mostly Roland Barthes or Susan Sonntag: The Swiss photographers have compiled twelve classics from the realm of photography theory, caved them, added a lens in front and a plate in back and thus turned them into a self-made camera. At the forefront of the manipulated book stack: Barthes Camera Lucida (1980), directly followed by Sontag’s On Photography (1977). If these authors’ highly cited words have become hollow by repetition, the least they can do now is use their hollowness productively by serving as the body of a DIY picture-making device.

The comical, ironic approach to photography is typical for Onorato and Krebs. They studied photography at the Zurich University of the Arts and have been working together since 2003. Their book camera is part of a series and publication entitled AS LONG AS IT PHOTOGRAPHS/IT MUST BE A CAMERA (2011), showing a range of other unthinkable home-made camera fabrications– a tortoiseshell is just one of the numerous extravagant materials in use here. Their series The Great Unreal (2010) is equally amusing. A road trip through the USA served as a background for putting the most diverse modes of analogue manipulation (and some American clichés) to the test: a fake cardboard street leading towards the horizon mocks the notion of the endless Midwestern routes while in another picture a slope in front of the Grand Canyon is populated by a flock of French fries.

At this year’s abc, their Zurich based gallery RaebervonStenglin will be showing some of Onorato’s and Krebs’ abnormal self made cameras and a series of “spins”: a kind of kinetic reflection upon the notion of the still life, resembling spinning photograms. We are very excited to see how this young artist duo’s illusionism and humour will surprise us in the future – and how many texts will be written about them including quotations by Barthes and Sontag.

Picture: Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Construction (Marzahn) (2012), Silver Gelatine Print, 101,5 x 128,3 cm, Courtesy: the artists, RaebervonStenglin, Zürich

From orchids and bears

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 13:36:05 +0200

The first thing we saw when entering Haus der Kulturen der Welt was Angela Merkel. For his installation This is me, this is my country (2012), architect Arno Brandlhuber has replaced the torn down box office in the entrance by terrariums with hybridized orchids. Each variety is dedicated to political dignitaries or heads of state. Brandlhuber got inspired by the veneration North Koreans pay to their “Kimilsungia”, an orchid originally bred by Indonesia on the occasion of a state visit of Kim Il-Sung in 1965. The symbolically charged orchid garden is a beautiful start into the exhibition Between Walls and Windows. Architecture and Ideology entirely dedicated to the conference hall and its historical legacy.

Curator Valerie Smith has liberated the building from installations that did not belong to the original design, such as the box office or projection walls. Even the guidance system has been taken down. She insisted on restoring the original state in order to emphasize the sculptural quality of the building. The conference hall with its audacious roof dates from 1958 and is based on the design by Hugh A. Stubbins. Other than the architectural icons of post-war modernity in residential Hansa-Viertel, the conference hall is openly ideologically charged: a small hill had been erected to make sure the building would be visible in former East Berlin. A symbol of freedom, optimism and progress, the conference hall was a present of the USA.

10 artists and architects have been invited to question the rhetoric of the building – and the various manifestions of ideology. Some of the projects thus deal with the history of HKW. Marko Sancanin presents Pieces in the Crypt (2012), i.e. sculptures and archival photographs related to the roof architecture but also its collapse – based on an architectural drawing on an until date hidden wall of HKW.

Other contributions such as You rate it! Neither poor, nor standard anchor the house in a global context. Architectural group Supersudaca occupied the cloakroom for their parody of credit rating agencies and their influence on the economy of the rated countries. Even the roof is being turned into a stage for various projects: 19 hours for the kiosk by Studio Miessen turns the rooftop café in a walk-in vitrine and centre of their event program. Amateur Architecture Studio (Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu), critics of a globalized architectural practice errect their own Tile Theatre, an inhabitable pavillion built with traditionally manufactured Chinese roof tiles and bamboo sticks.

Then the Initiative Weltkulturerbe Doppeltes Berlin takes the opportunity of presenting their undertaking of having the insignia of an architectural competition between East and West listed as UNESCO World Cultural Heritage with various works and a Congress – happening today. Their flag with two bears will then be raised and visible from afar.

In short: We loved the show – as any of the site-specific installations is critical, yet amusing and the architecture of HKW is a simply amazing.

The show Between Walls and Windows is on view throughout September. Admission is free. AND we will be giving a tour through the building on September 16^th!

dOCUMENTA (13): World Views

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 13:07:00 +0200

One of our highlights at this year‘s dOCUMENTA 13 main venues certainly was Neue Galerie. We got absorbed by contributions, which not only engaged with the medial conditionality of our “reality”, but did so by means of an unconventional take on their respective artistic medium, such as seen with Wael Shawky, Roman Ondak or Geoffrey Farmer.

It was great fun to track the funny associations in Observations (1995-2011). Slovak artist Roman Ondak arranged 120 cuttings from a book that remains unknown in 72 frames and dispersed them onto the grey walls of the museum‘s basement. While the pictures recall press photographs of everyday objects and situations their captions are quite enigmatic – because while being descriptive and prosaic, they‘re unexpected and inexplicable especially in their relation to the picture. They either accentuate seemingly irrelevant details of the pictures or decontextualize the depicted scenes in unforeseen and, most important, quite amusing ways. The resulting disorientation of the spectator questions our common reference frames but also our trust in the factuality of pictures. Ondak’s take on an individual interpretation of conventional “reality” seemed all the more refreshing, in contrast to the many (pseudo)-scientific artistic endeavours at dOCUMENTA 13.

Less amusing, but nonetheless a fantastic take on the factual is the beautifully nightmarish animation of Egyptian artist Wael Shawky: The musical film Cabaret Crusades: The path to Cairo (2012) is part of the tetralogy Cabinet Crusades (2010 – ongoing) on the Christian Crusades against Jerusalem. In order to illuminate the present situation in the Middle East, the films narrate historical facts. But contrary to a documentation or a costume drama the events are re-enacted by precious antique marionettes, puppets commonly associated with fiction and fairy tales. They perform the sanguinary story in beautifully detailed sets and the whole animation is of an amazing epic quality where atmospheric takes alternate with intense close-ups. We could hardly leave the room before the end of the animation – the contrast of its fantastic aesthetic and its topicality being quite intense. But there was so much more worth to be discovered.

The delicate yet abundant large-scale collage Leaves of Grass (2012) by Geoffrey Farmer is set up in the upstairs Loggia of the museum. Farmer arranged hundreds of shadow puppets, cut-outs from Life magazine, the most influential illustrated news magazine in the US, published from 1935-1985. He strings 5 decades of iconic faces, products and events together in a massive retrospective, detaching them from their former magazine context. The relevance the media once at least partially attributed to those pictures has vanished. Their dense layering makes them form a colourful body, which from afar looks like colourful grassland. And just like leafs the cut-outs gently move when beholders pass by.

Suddenly this rustling chronicle made us realize, we hadn’t yet explored Karlsaue at all. So we left Neue Gallery and headed down into the greens.