2024-04-25 14:49:49
After the opening of the Venice Biennale a week ago, many collectors are heading to Berlin this weekend. Because it’s Gallery Weekend and it’s already for the 20th time. The program of the 55 participating contemporary art galleries ranges from the local West to the global East.
The Haas Gallery presents the artist community “Mülheimer Freiheit”, Cologne’s answer to the “Neue Wilden” of West Berlin. And Sprüth Magers courageously opens her show “Territory” by five Asian artists who are not even part of the gallery’s official roster. On the Gallery Weekend Berlin (until April 28, 2024) established positions and absolute newcomers will be shown. And in this anniversary year, too, it’s the mix that makes the difference.
Nature as a driving force
A lot of people in the art world are talking about the Anthropocene and climate change and environmentalism, but Haley Mellin is really doing something about it. “Art into Acres”, an organization founded by the artist and environmental activist, has enabled the protection of 13 million hectares of nature since 2017, most recently in the Manacacías National Park in Colombia. For this purpose, artists produce their own works, which are converted into money, and “Art into Acres” also receives support from art institutions that have recognized it as an alternative to dubious CO₂ compensation programs.
Mellin also sees the beauty and complexity of nature as a driving force in her own work. In the Dittrich & Schlechtriem gallery she is exhibiting five paintings created in 2024 that use gouache, acrylic and ink to depict the intricacy of Latin American rainforests, which can be preserved for posterity thanks to “Art into Acres”. These are works that can no longer be described as landscape paintings because the forest surrounds and devours the artist on all sides.
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In addition to the paintings, Haley is showing three large-format charcoal drawings on canvas, which were created on site in the gallery in order to avoid transport. On Friday, April 26, 2024, at 4 p.m. there will be a panel discussion with Haley Mellin, the author Enuma Okoro, the artist Andreas Greiner and the curator Lisa Botti, moderated by the director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Klaus Biesenbach. bp
„Biodiversity and Betadiversity“, Gallery Dittrich & Schlechtriemuntil June 29, 2024
There’s music in there
At first glance: Geometric abstractions on the walls, whose shapes are reminiscent of Arp and Schlemmer and their colors reminiscent of Montessori. At second glance: These are wall reliefs, with recesses and mounted wood, cords and drumheads. At third glance: There is more. These have to be instruments. What a shame that they hang completely still and silent on the walls.
In fact, as an employee of the Wentrup Gallery explains, Nevin Aladağ’s works need to be activated. This means that they can and must be “played”. Because the cords are strings, the woods are familiar from xylophones and the drumheads are, yes, drumheads.
Nevin Aladağ, „Vibrating Images“, bei Wentrup
Quelle: Nevin Aladağ
The best thing to do is to visit the Berlin gallery, which recently also has a branch in Venice, when musicians are there to activate the “Vibrating Images”. In any case, the subtitles of the individual pictures make you curious not only to look at them, but also to listen to them: “Harp Moondance”, “Swinging Colors”, “Windy Rhythm”. For Gallery Weekend, the “Thundergong” and the other Aladağs will sound on Friday, April 26, 2024, at 7 p.m. and on Saturday, April 27, 2024, at 3 p.m. woe
„Vibrating Images“, Galerie Wentrupuntil June 22, 2024
Everyday life on stage
Galerie Buchholz shows once again how well it has its premises under control. The nested old building floor is not easy to use. For Wolfgang Tillmans, however, it is a home game: the core of his work always includes the presentation, the hanging of his sometimes small, sometimes very large prints.
Photography from the exhibition by Wolfgang Tillmans at Buchholz
Source: Courtesy of Galerie Buchholz
Tillmans showcases the incredible photographic quality with huge prints. Seemingly succinct motifs (structural details, construction sites, strange cacti) take on visual presence and meaning. A bush of Brussels sprouts is seen as a whimsical sculpture of everyday life, the shadow play of an industrial hall as a work of light art.
And across the rooms there is a kind of sculpture that brings together the juxtaposition and juxtaposition of images: Tillmans has arranged his photo leporellos as if by chance on rough scaffolding planks that float above wooden tripods. woe
„Summer Storm Rain Drops Freeze Frame“, Buchholz Galleryuntil June 15, 2024
Magic in a glass
Ann Veronica Janssens also has a strong interest in materiality. Her preferred material is glass, whose magic she showcases in an abstract way. Chunks of glass, completely transparent and bubble-free, lie on the floor as if they were thick ice cubes that simply refuse to melt.
Ann Veronica Janssens, „Magic Mirrors (Pink & Blue)“, 2013-2023, bei Esther Schipper
Source: © The artist/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
She simulates the flapping of a butterfly’s wings with innovative coatings on fluted glass plates. Safety glass panes shimmering in rainbow colors and shattered on the inside lean against the wall at such an angle that they glow mysteriously from the space behind them. Janssens quietly encourages us to come into contact with her works in the Esther Schipper Gallery, to swing past them on two suspended swings and to enjoy our own perception.
Not even the two wolf sculptures in a niche in the gallery, which collapse at irregular intervals, disturb you. A stuffed wolf and a replica of the ancient Roman she-wolf collapse like toy pieces whose base plate is pressed to cause the dolls, held together by strings, to perform strange contortions. “Two She-Wolves (in Wolf’s Clothing)” are the names of the effective new works by Julius von Bismarck, who is now represented not only by his regular gallery Alexander Levy, but also by Esther Schipper. woe
„Spring Show“, Gallery Esther Schipperuntil June 15, 2024
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Cosmic contacts
Trisha Baga, born in 1985 in Venice, Florida, lives in New York, is actually known for immersive videos, installations and performative situations. In the Galerie Société, Baga now demonstrates his painterly finesse. We see large formats with star clusters and spiral nebulae against the blackness of the cosmos. But objects from this world also appear in the paintings.
Trisha Baga, “Earthshine”, 2024, bei Society
Quelle: © Trisha Baga/Courtesy Society, Berlin
There are holes in the universe that make the view hit a brick wall. Then coffee cups, breast pumps or a computer keyboard appear, and a black hole opens up under the mouse pad. You slowly begin to identify reflections and overlapping image levels. The painting is based on high-tech photos from the James Webb space telescope, but also ambiguous insights into Baga’s everyday life as an artist and, more recently, a mother. woe
„Contact“, Company Galleryuntil July 6, 2024
Shy stars
The artist Rosemarie Trockel, who lived in Cologne for a long time and now in Berlin, was honored with a much-lauded retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art MMK in Frankfurt in 2023. The seventy-one-year-old is considered “the best-known unknown in the art world” (“Die Zeit”) and “Germany’s most successful artist” (“Süddeutsche Zeitung”). Trockel has arranged a very special exhibition for Gallery Weekend at the Crone Gallery, with which she has been working since 1984.
Rosemarie Trockel, untitled, 1989, at Crone
Source: © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
She shows her own works on paper, dating back to the late 1970s, in combination with works by Hanne Darboven (1942–2009). Darboven’s carefully composed design for a minimal art labyrinth from 1967 is extremely interesting from an art historical perspective, simply because such sculptures by Darboven never existed. It remained with designs that she showed at Leo Castelli in New York in 1973.
Darboven’s canonized calendar calculations on graph paper now meet the feminist-arcane humor of the young Rosemarie Trockel, which is reflected in watercolors, gouaches and ink drawings, including the covers of books she invented (most of which are now in the collection of the Museum of Modern type). “Early Birds” draws from the collection of the Crone Gallery, which has represented the two artists for decades – and is a homage to Rosemarie Trockel’s admired colleague Hanne Darboven. bp
„Early Birds“, Galerie Croneuntil June 15, 2024
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