Berlin Gallery and Studio Tour – Summer 2014

During the Transart Institute MFA Summer Residency in Berlin, we were given insight into the art world there by going on a gallery and studio tour on July 26th. The tour was organized by the school’s Initiatives Coordinator, kate hers RHEE. This was an excellent way to begin the program. Most Berlin galleries set up at the major art fairs such as Cologne, Miami, Basel, and Hong Kong. All images copyright © 2014 by Stephanie Reid.

Gallery Tour

Gallery Stop 1: Esther Schipper

Exhibit: “Paper Work” featuring works by Ceal Floyer and Karin Sander created with office supplies. The former artist created a series of gradated circular ink blots make by pressing grey pens onto the center of blotting paper sheets until the pens are out of ink. Whereas the latter artist utilizes objects such as a hole punch, clips, or tabs on A4 paper to design patterns.

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Gallery Stop 2: Kühlhaus Berlin.

This is an approximately 18,000 sq feet historical building that was a cooling station before refrigerators were readily available. The courtyard in the photo below, with the whale hovering in the air, used to be a market and train station where people could come and buy foods that had been kept fresh in the kühlhaus. Several people recently purchased the warehouse for cultural activities and are remodeling the building to code, for example, by building cement stairs vs. wooden ones. The Berlin Art Prize, an annual art competition between local contemporary artists, was held at the Kühlhaus earlier this year.

However, the four-story exhibition on display while we were there was of student works from the school of high art, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee in the GDR (German Democratic Republic), or East Germany. It was explained that arts funding is highly competitive since the conjoining of East and West Germany because now there are two major art schools in Berlin, the other being Akademie der Künste, in the West, which has a history going back to the 1600’s. None of the works had labels, therefore I am unable to provide the names of the artists whose works are shown here, except for a sculptural installation in front of the building which is the result of a performance given by Elena Kaludova. Elena wore a t-shirt with the slogan “STOP BORING ART!” printed on the back so that it could be read as she drilled holes through the wooden sign. The sign had the words “BORING ART” carved out of it. The artist drilled through most of the letters until only the “O” and “R” were left intact.

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Gallery Stop 3: Schwarz Contemporary run by Ann Schwarz

This exhibit was of works by several artists represented by the gallery.

Postcard of outdoor installation, 2200 K, by Monika Goetz

photograph of paper by Holger Neihaus

painting by Fee Kleiss (left) and photo of paper by Holger Neihaus (right)

delicate “stencil” paintings on white kite fabric by Henrik Eiben

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Gallery Stop 4: Wentrup Galerie by Jan Wentrup

 The gallery currently represents 13 artists. Works by several of those artists were on display.

Main gallery – Axel Geis’s photo realistic chandeliers painted from different angles on highly glossed canvases. The viewer stands in the middle where the light fixture would normally be so that the subject and object are reversed. How strange to be scrutinized by a light fixture! This is an excellent example of “assemblage” mentioned in the World as Scuplture Workshop section of my post here: https://haikuflash.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/course-sampler-transart-institute-mfa-and-certificate-summer-residency-2014/

Gregor Hildebrandt creates many of his artworks from cassette tapes. In some cases, as with this piece, he glues the tape to a canvas and before peeling the audio tape back off again, he applies pressure through footsteps, scratching, etcetera, so that the emulsion stays on the canvas where he has effected it. Those works are named after the music that was recorded on the tape. This one is titled “Neues vom Trickser (Toco) IV” by the band Tocotronic.

Another piece by Gregor Hildebrandt. In this work, he cut a print of a still frame from the movie “Eyes Wide Shut” into small rectangles that fit inside of cassette case spines then displayed them in a wall organizer.

Peles Empire are two female artists, Katharina Stöver from Germany and Barbara Wolff from Romania who both currently work in London. The goal of their collaborative team is to copy the rooms of the Peles Castle in Romania and present it in the new ways. The castle already consists of copied, mismatched styles from Baroque to Art Deco. The artists are then creating copies of copies to a microscopic level. The replicative nature of their work can then be described as sculptural as discussed in my World as Sculpture Workshop blog linked above. Here, a photograph of marble is used as a paper mâché landscape onto a cement sheet.

another angle of the Peles Empire slab

Here photographic images of Peles Castle are used as wallpaper on cement sheets. Layers appear to be torn away to reveal another texture and/or image underneath.

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Studio Tour

HB 55 (Herzbergstrasse 55) Räume der kunst (rooms of art). This historical set of buildings used to be a margarine factory.

1) Aleks Slota was our tour guide and has a studio here. He explained that he uses a megaphone to recite speeches that were written but never read, out of his studio window. One example was the speech written in case the U.S. astronauts never returned from their first trip to the moon.

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2) Art photographer, Ivonne Thein, makes commentary on the fashion world and beauty, sometimes through jarring imagery. http://www.ivonnethein.com/

from Ivonne Thein’s Thirty-two Kilos series

from Ivonne Thein’s Thirty-two Kilos series

from the Second Skin series

video of a woman dressing into and undressing from a flesh colored body suit

A hidden camera behind the black box on the wall displays a live action, out of focus video of the person standing in front of it, thus rendering them indistinguishably.

postcard from Ivonne Thein’s Proforma series which appears to be human bodies seamlessly joined with mannequin heads or possibly just their faces. This is the most subtle and effective commentary on airbrushing / Photoshopping models that I’ve seen to date.

Her work was one of the primary inspirations for my first post-graduation project, Dissolve, here: https://haikuflash.wordpress.com/2016/07/15/a-collection-of-photography-on-the-theme-imperceptible-self/

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3) Louise Gibson is a sculptress from Scotland currently working in Berlin at a studio near a scrapyard. She recycles discarded clothing and electronics by embedding them in resin castings, then when dry, she cuts them into shapes. She also melts, morphs, and varnishes large appliances and building materials into blobs of color and sheen (see bottom shelf in image below).