Some Things from Berlin Art Gallery Weekend
For serious shoppers, Berlin Gallery Weekend may seem gratuitously unwieldy— a sort of quasi art fair not gathered under one convenient tent, but scattered all over the German capital, each location flung further than the next. But for those like myself who are just looking, the beauty of this vaguely organized annual enterprise is that it forces you to visit all of the incredible repurposed spaces the city never seems to grow short of. (Art envy? Not so much. Real estate envy? Totally.) This year those spaces included a massive brutalist church and a store front on the monumental GDR Boulevard Karl Marx Allee. Here, some highlights from the weekend, and not a white box in the bunch.
Peres Projects inaugurated its glamorous new space on the venerable Karl Marx Allee with a show of poppy self-portraits by Alex Israel.
Last week Ugo Rondinone took over Rockefeller Center in New York with his monumental public work “Human Nature.” “Primal,” his show of wonderful, miniature bronze horses on view at Esther Schipper gallery in Berlin, tips the scale to the other extreme.
A vintage print from Roswitha Hecke’s late-70s series on the Zurich prostitute Irene, on view at Sassa Trulzsch gallery.
Neon works by Joseph Kosuth at powerhouse gallery Spruth Magers.
St. Agnes, a former church in the Brutalist style, where Yohji Yamamoto held a fashion show last week, has been reincarnated as an exhibition space under gallerist Johann Gonig. On view was Alicja Kwade’s poetic “Nach Osten” which consists of a single light bulb swinging from a wire in the church’s massive main hall.
Another typically amazing Berlin art venue is the Boros collection, which is housed in a former military bunker. (The building as served as an air raid shelter, a tropical fruit warehouse, and the home of the erotic trade fair “Sexperimenta.”) Among the works currently on view is the artist Danh Vo’s cardboard American flag.
Sculptures by the German artist Isa Gensken, who will have a major retrospective at MoMA in the fall, on view at Neugerriemschneider.
The scrappy and terribly hip Michelberger Hotel is rumored to be opening an outpost in New York.
The new Berlin-Mitte HQ of O32c, where Joerg Koch, the magazine’s founder, also runs a small, self-contained gallery but not, apparently, a brothel.
KOW gallery, which is located downstairs from 032c, literally opens its doors to the public.
