A Guide to Berlin Art Week Assembled By 9 of the Citys Most Plugged-In Curators – artnet News

This years annualBerlin Art Weekis ready to open around the German capital. In a year marred by cancelations, the decentralized event is one of the few dates on the art calendar that has not been moved or erased completely.

With a truly wide-ranging schedule of shows that occur at small project spaces, private collections, and even a nightclub, it can sometimes be hard to know where to head first. Thats why we decided to ask those who probably know best.

Below, ninetalented Berlin-based curators tell us which exhibition they are most looking forward to seeing next week and why its worth a look.

PICK: Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Studio Berlin at Berghain

Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne The Original. at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Installation view. Silke Briel / HKW

In the 1920s, the historian of art and culture Aby Warburg created his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, tracing recurring visual themes and patterns across time, from antiquity to the Renaissance to contemporary culture, setting a new understanding of art history. His way of reading and connecting images over epochs, geographies, cultures, and civilizations is still one of the richest sources for visual and media studies.

This exhibition, realized in collaboration with the Warburg Institute in London, creates a very special occasion that brings together all panels of Warburgs unfinished magnum opus for the first time after his death. It is a must-see for everyone who is intrigued with reimagining the world.

Equally, Berghain has been the place bringing many scenes together in Berlin and it has been deeply missed by many in the city since its closure in March due to COVID-19 measures. The club has been engaged with realizing different visual projects before, but so far Studio Berlin will be the most expanded project to take place at the large former power facility, with around 80 artists involved. We will see how site-specificity will acquire new meanings in this project devoted to Berlin artists.

PICK:Lerato Shadis Maru a Pula Is a Song of Happiness at KINDL Zentrum fr zeitgenssische Kunst

Lerato Shadis Lefa Le (2019). Photo: dewil.ch (cc by-nc-nd), 2019. Courtesy Kindl zentrum fr zeitgenssische kunst.

I am excited to see the exhibition of Lerato Shadi at the KINDL Zentrum fr zeitgenssische Kunst. Shadi works primarily with performance and in her works negotiates established systems of suppression and exclusion.

So far, I only know the video workMabogo Dinku(2019). In this piece you can see a hand gesturally moving back and forth. Shadi is singing a verse of a folk song in Setswana, her mother tongue. The song talks about the history of her people, who were excluded during apartheid and whose history is lost in the history of the colonizers.

This is one of the reasons why she does not use a translation or subtitles. She refuses to accept the western system of historiography and language. I look forward to seeing more works and learning more from her.

Shoufay Derz, not this, not that. Installation view, Knstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. Photo: David Brandt

To learn about some dynamic positions slightly far from the gallery crowds, I strongly recommend a visit to Knstlerhaus Bethanien, an artist-in-residence program with workspaces for professional artists and exhibition spaces. Their current exhibition provides insights into five diverse practices featuring installations by a selection of their 2020 resident artists: Yang Chi-Chuan, Rie Nagai, Shoufay Derz, Katsuhiko Matsubara, and Yurika Sunada.

Yang has produced ceramic works, which take their shapes and colors from climbing gyms and discarded items of trash. Nagai created a series of paintings that evoke her experience of Berlins night life.Derz presents over 24 photographic prints and a new video work, deriving from her Loving the Alien performance/project. Matubara is showing 15large-scale canvases comprised of thick layers of vibrantly hued oil paint, provoking a visceral reaction in their audience. Sunadas installation features a slowly moving spot-lit sphere made from curved lengths of shiny steel, reflective of her experience of time during lockdown in Berlin.

Vivian Suter, studio view, Panajachel, Guatemala, 2018. Courtesy of the Artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brussels; House of Gaga; Karma International; and Proyectos Ultravioleta. Photo: David Regen

I am excited to see Vivian Suters exhibition at Brcke Museum. The building and interior, especially the carpets, are very particular and Im keen to see how Suter positions her works amongst the collection, a selection made by her mother, artist Elisabeth Wild. Collages by Wild will also be in the show, and in my mind this proposes a matriarchal lineage counter to [and inserted] amongst Kirchner, Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff, Heckel, Mller, Pechstein, and Kaus.

Michael Mllers studio, 2020. Photo: Marco Funke. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin

Michael Mller is clearly unstoppable: Having started his career in the medium of drawing, he spent the last decade or so creating ever more complex conceptual installations crisscrossing all artistic genres, from meticulous mega-drawings to seemingly casual scribblings, from ready-made sculptures to artisanal objects, from scripted audio plays to ambitious sci-fi animations.

This insatiable tour through artistic strategies, all of which he champions brilliantly, arrives at a new chapter: this is his first exhibition focusing on painting. One could quite rightly call this hunger for peeing on every tree presumptuous. But just as well one could follow this highly inquisitive, inventive, and clairvoyant mind expediting art way beyond what one usually gets to see.

I am very much looking forward to seeing the works of indigenous Canadian artist Walter Scott, presented at the project spaceAshley Berlin [fulldisclosure: Artnet Newss EU Editor Kate Brown is a co-organizer of the show]. Ivebeen following his constructed character Wendy for some time now; it chronicles the adventurous and tiresome reality of a young woman artist placed into a sinister,satirical, funny, and true-to-life version oftodays contemporaryart world.I thought about Wendy last week when someone said that sometimes the art world can be the worst mixture of exhausting andboring at the same time.Im excited to see how his long-term investigation into the character of Wendy and her narrative translates into a spatial setting and how this is embedded in his larger practice that looks at questions of representation andnarrative construction.

Katrn Inga Jnsdttir Hjrdsardttir, still from performance, LAND SELF LOVE your self is land of love (2020) at Gallery Gudmundsdottir. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Gudmundsdottir, Berlin.

Im looking forward to seeing Katrn Inga Jnsdttirs solo at the newly established Gallery Gudmundsdottir in Mitte. The exact location of this dealers space is a secrettheir address is given out only on request, but I can say that it is in an old air raid shelter. Gudmundsdottirs all-female roster of mostly Icelandic artists is a breath of fresh air for this town, and Im expecting something energetic and kinky from Katrin.

Benedikte Bjerre My Dream Is Longer Than The Night. Courtesy the artist and Goeben.

What draws me to Benedikte Bjerres work is her bold approach to materials and everyday objects. The Copenhagen-based artist claimsMy Dream Is Longer Than The Nightin an exhibition at Goeben that promises to emerge from a state of mind many involuntarilyinhabitin our current situation. Having previously dealt with how overconsumption increasingly disconnects time and space, the recycled reality of dreams marks a new chapter in her practice. With tongue in cheek while questioning socioeconomic conditions, Bjerre expands her sculptures into an installation inviting visitors to encounter an animated and outragedair circulation system.

Berlin Art Weekis opening from September 9 through 13 around the city. For more information about the official program, see their website.

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A Guide to Berlin Art Week Assembled By 9 of the Citys Most Plugged-In Curators - artnet News