The 12th edition of Gallery Weekend Berlin opens this week in the German capital, an annual event that has invited 54 galleries to align their latest exhibitions, all opening their doors to the public for first viewings on 29 April. Many of the galleries have chosen to focus on solo exhibitions this year; here are but a few of Elephant’s favourites.
Tomás Saraceno, Esther Schipper
Argentinian, trained architect Tomás Saraceno will be showing Aerocene, a series of airborne sculptures that the artist hopes will achieve ‘the longest emission-free journey around the world’. Saraceno regularly creates architectural and sculptural responses to environmental issues that cross the line between art and science, and showed the project at last year’s Climate Conference in Paris. This exhibition will premiere chamber performance work Arachno Concert: With Arachne (Nephila senegalensis), Cosmic Dust (Porus Chondrite) and the Breathing Ensemble.
Anne Collier and Victor Man, Galerie Neu
Galerie Neu will show two solo exhibitions from American appropriation artist Anne Collier, and Romanian-born painter, Victor Man. Collier’s work addresses the female in photography and advertising, using images of semi-nude women and women crying in adverts from the 50s to the 80s. Man creates intense works, that employ a heavy green and blue colour palette and cross an eerie line between realism and dark dream.
Alexandre Singh, Sprüth Magers
On first look The School for Objects Criticized–the installation of French-born, NY-based Alexandre Singh–appears to be a formal composition of everyday objects, dramatically lit in a darkened space and sat atop plinths. On closer inspection, the works can be found in conversation with one another about such weighty issues as God, death…and art criticism. Slinky toys, toasters and bottles of bleach even go so far as to discuss the work of a very interesting artist, Alexandre Singh.
One of the longest-practicing artists to appear at Gallery Weekend Berlin, 66-year-old Swiss artist Miriam Cahn will be showing mare nostrum. The term refers to the Latin phrase—Our Sea—which was employed by the Italian Nationalists in 1861 in their bid for Italy to be seen as the successor of the Roman Empire. The term was used again by a naval operation that aimed to rescue refugees from the Mediterranean, that was terminated last year. The paintings in this show are a nod to this later use of the phrase, depicting humans lost in a haze, running nude or huddled in groups along a distractingly vibrantly-coloured coastline.
Stephen G. Rhodes, Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery
Born in Houston and currently working between Berlin and New Orleans, Stephen G. Rhodes has a divserse practice which often addresses American issues (no, not Donald Trump) and the historical unconscious. He will show SWEETHAVEN ASSUMPTION: Or The Propertylessness Preparedness and Pals at Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery, exploring Lousiana’s 2012 Bayou Corne sinkhole—in which a salt dome cavern collapsed and many locals were evacuated—and the decampment of Malta’s Sweethaven Village, for the 1979 film Popeye.
Philippe Decrauzat, Mehdi Chouakri
There is a characteristically monochrome covering of the gallery, for the Swiss artist Philippe Decrauzat’s second solo exhibition with Mehdi Chouakri. One large work spans the entire gallery wall, there are also new paintings and a film. Taking his cue from Op-art, the sprawling wall-work sees a checkerboard pattern exploded and shrunk as it works its way across the room, space and work becoming one. On top of this, sit paintings that show the same pattern in gradient tones. For video work 20 Figures he zooms in to a swirling up of coffee that is intense, abstract and entirely hypnotic.
The Iraqi artist Hiwa K is showing the innocent sounding This Lemon Tastes of Apple at KOW, the lemon in question actually referring to the fruits handed out during the—quickly suppressed—2011 Iraqi Spring to relieve the noses and mouths of the tear-gassed crowds. The artist has compiled a film from public footage of himself on harmonica and Daroon Othman on guitar amongst the crowds, playing Once Upon a Time in the West. The title also refers, ominously, to the tear gas used in Saddam Hussein’s campaign against the Kurds, which smelled of apples. There is additional video work on display by the artist.
Gallery Weekend Berlin runs from 29 April until 1 May. See the full programme at gallery-weekend-berlin.de.
