Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers

For the most recent new exhibition in Berlin, Sprüth Magers has brought together work from thirteen artists under the title Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens.  Curated by Goodroom and Johannes Fricke Waldthausen, the exhibition features works by Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Andy Hope 1930, Oliver Laric, Jon Rafman, and Andro Wekua, among others.  Intended to navigate visitors through the intersecting narratives within the realm of surrealist animation, abstraction and the ideas of “New Materialism” as expressed through the greater logistics of the world wide web, the exhibition references the notion of the screen as a critical tool of the conscious and unconscious, as well as a surface for projections of communication and technological abstraction.   (more…)

Cyprien Gaillard, Where Nature Runs Riot (2015). All Images courtesy Sprueth Magers Berlin.

Now through July 18, Sprüth Magers Gallery in Berlin hosts Where Nature Runs Riot, an exhibition of new work by Cyprien Gaillard, combining film, sculpture, and sound to inform and interrupt each other in the three main pieces that comprise the show.  Thematically, Gaillard focuses on the dialogue formed between natural and man-made structures erected at the limits of history and civilization, testing the capacity of sculptural form to illustrate both the esoteric and psychedelic.  References to major figures and tropes from art and musical history reveal the artist’s interest in synthesizing seemingly disparate elements towards a type of aesthetic logic to history and dialogue, an often palimpsestic structure of overlapping layers and interpretations. In this exhibition, Gaillard demonstrates and forges relationships between stillness and movement, natural and man-made form, sound and vision.

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Katharina Grosse, The Smoking Kid (Installation View), all photos via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

Now through June 21, Johan König in Berlin presents The Smoking Kid, a collection of new paintings by Katharina Grosse.  Grosse is known for her work employing bold colors and ambitious movement in order to transcend, open, and test the limits and boundaries defining space.  Color and gesture are central concerns of this artist, whose works are at once challenging and whimsical, and her current exhibition departs from Grosse’s typical method of large-scale sculptural installation, turning her abstract style instead towards work in which movement and color is tidily contained to the canvas instead of imposed onto walls and other three dimensional forms.

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Tate Modern Director Chris Dercon will leave the museum to head up Berlin’s experimental theatre landmark, the Volksbühne in 2017, The Guardian reports.  “Chris Dercon is helping to open Tate Modern to a wider world and more diverse audiences through his support for a more international programme, photography, live performance and film,” says Tate head Nicolas Serota. “We look forward to working with him on the opening of the new Tate Modern and until he takes up his appointment in Berlin in 2017.” (more…)

Louise Lawler, Dots and Slices (Traced) (2006/2013), via Sprüth Magers

In 2013, Louise Lawler performed a series of “tracings” at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, taking previously executed photographs from Lawler’s broad body of work, and converting the image down to a simple vector graphic in partnership with artist and children’s book illustrator Jon Buller.  These tracings are currently the subject of the artist’s most recent solo exhibition at Sprüth Magers Berlin, as Levine returns to her particularly subtle brand of institutional critique. (more…)

Dash Snow, Untitled (2008), all images courtesy Blain|Southern Berlin

On view at Blain|Southern Berlin is a group exhibition examining the use of text and poetics in art objects from the 1960s to the present day. Entitled Sed Tantum Dic Verbo (Just Say The Word), the exhibition was curated by American writer and editor Glenn O’Brien and will remain on view through December 20th.

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CNN has published a list detailing some of the best attractions and galleries that the city of Berlin currently has to offer, including KW Institute, Sammlung Boros, and the popular Mobile Kino traveling cinema on its list. (more…)

Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art has announced that the New York-based DIS Collective will be the curator’s for the 2016 edition of the Berlin Biennale. The collective has made increasingly larger waves among the institutional art world in the past years, drawing rave reviews for its DISown exhibition, as well as its DIS Images Studios project last year.  Previous curators include Klaus Biesenbach, Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni. (more…)

Wolfgang Tillmans’s Berlin gallery Between Bridges has embarked on a new project, creating an accommodating space for the appreciation of classic pop and dance albums.  “The Playback Room” as it is called, is currently featuring Colourbox, the 1980’s dance act behind “Pump Up the Volume.”  “Some records are just perfect artworks, but you just cannot go anywhere to listen to the way the musicians heard it at the mastering stage,” said Tillmans. “While you can play them on your stereo or iPhone there is never a space dedicated to them and you can never listen in studio quality.” (more…)

John Knight, Work, in situ, Galerie NEU:MD72:Gladstone Gallery (2013)

One of Berlin’s most notable galleries, Galerie Neu, is Gladstone Gallery’s guest for this summer, presenting a reflection from the German capital’s vibrant contemporary art scene. Known for its avant-garde art spaces and affordable living conditions for emerging artists, Berlin has been one of the most influential cities for the European art scene, and the selection at Gladstone Gallery, mainly focusing on the notion of place and displacement, gives the opportunity to catch up with the city’s recent art trends. (more…)

Wolfgang Tillmans, Eastern Woodlands Room (2014), Photo: Anders Sune Berg Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

The 8th edition of the Berlin Biennale has opened its doors, taking up space within the Haus am Waldsee and Museum Dahlem, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, as well as a number of satellite events, projects and talks spread across Berlin, running through the beginning of August.  Curated by Juan Gaitán, the exhibition this year features an explicit look at the nature of images in contemporary society, in their proliferation, reception and interpretation.

Tonel, Commerce (2014), Photo: Anders Sune Berg; Courtesy Tonel (more…)

Gao-Yuan, Ai-Weiwei (2012), all images courtesy Martin-Gropius Bau

Opening on April 3rd at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, and organized by the Berliner Festspiele, is the largest solo show of works by Ai Weiwei ever to be exhibited. Taking up 3,000 square meters in 18 rooms, the installations and sculptures.  Entitled Evidence, the politically driven works from the artist, architect, and amateur politician alludes to the term meaning “proof that will stand up in court.” The works were designed in his studio on the outskirts of Beijing, and many of which were specifically designed for display in the museum’s spacious exhibition halls.

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The Guardian has published an in-depth look at the early work of Thierry Noir, one of the first graffiti artists to paint on the Berlin Wall during the 1980’s.  In the profile, Noir recounts his taunting of West German guards, his developing style, and his meeting with Keith Haring, who painted over one of Noir’s works.  “I talked to Keith and he was embarrassed and apologized,” Noir writes. “He said: ‘In New York you can get killed for that’. He was invited over and the section of Wall had been pre-prepared for him. The yellow was very transparent so you could see my statues through it. I was angry, but it was not his fault.” (more…)

Jeppe Hein, 360Ëš Illusion III (2007), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Currently on view at Saint Agnes in Berlin, Gallery Johann König presents YOU, a striking selection of new works by Danish-born, Berlin-based artist Jeppe Hein, continuing the artist’s unique exploration into the phenomena of the human visual system, and its role in defining a body in space.

Jeppe Hein, YOU (Installation View), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Concerning himself with the perceptual investigations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hein’s work is an investigation into the act of “embodied experience,” expressed not merely through a series of trompe l’oeil  trickeries, but rather in complex optical illusions that force the viewer into a visual and physical relationship with space itself.  Best expressed through his enormous mirrored projects, the body is as much a part of the work as the eye, using its physical presence and the perceptual inputs tied to the brain as a way to subvert an easily codified version of reality.

Jeppe Hein, 360Ëš Illusion III (2007), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

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Mark Flood, SADISTIC pleasure! (2013), via Peres Projects

Currently on view at Peres Projects in Berlin is an exhibition of new work by American artist Mark Flood, using his new pseudonym “Mike Lood” for the first time. Entitled Ask Officer Pepperspray, the exhibition is Flood’s fifth solo show at Peres Projects. (more…)

Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893), Courtesy Munch Museet

Edvard Munch is enjoying somewhat of a timely spotlight, having just has his iconic 1895 pastel The Scream set the global auction record at almost $120 million last May, just one year short of what would be the 150th year since his birth.  This correlation is not lost on the Norwegian city of Oslo, where Munch grew up, and 2013 has been dedicated to the pioneering abstractionist, with a pair of landmark shows compiling almost 300 works from Munch’s groundbreaking career in Oslo, Paris, and Berlin.

Edvard Munch, Workers on Their Way Home (1913-1914), Courtesy Munch Museet (more…)

After several months of deliberation, Berlin officials have announced a new plan for a $174 million museum to house the city’s extensive 20th century art collection.  Located in Potsdamer Platz, the new museum will boast an area of about 9,900 square meters (106,563 square feet), and could open as soon as 2022 if work starts immediately.  It now falls to the German government to approve these plans.  “With a new building, the Nationalgalerie collection could at last be exhibited permanently on a big scale.” German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said in a statement. (more…)

Anish Kapoor, The Death of Leviathan (2011-2013), via Martin-Gropius-Bau

Covering more than 3,000 square feet in the Martin-Gropius Bau, Kapoor in Berlin is one of the Berliner Festspiele’s tentpole events this summer, examining the pioneering work of Anish Kapoor’s sculptural practice against the backdrop of his German contemporaries and influences.  Composed of almost 70 works, the exhibition serves as an examination of the Turner Prize winner’s work of the past 30 years.

Anish Kapoor, Shooting Into the Corner (2008-2009), via The Guardian (more…)

Hilma af Klint, The Swan, No. 17, Group IX/SUW, The SUW/UW Series (1915), courtesy Hamburger Bahnhof

The first-ever retrospective of the pioneering Swedish abstract artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) is currently on view at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof museum. The exhibition includes 200 of Klint’s most revered abstract works, as well as several lesser-known paintings and works on paper, some of which have never been publicly displayed.

Hilma af Klint, Buddha’s Standpoint in the Earthly Life, No. 3a, (1920), courtesy Hamburger Bahnhof

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Alex Israel, Self-Portrait (2013), via Peres Projects

Los Angeles-based Alex Israel makes work that seems constantly engaged with his home city, the Californian metropolis that plays home to so many of image-driven outlets of the culture industry.  Borrowing from the high-gloss, high production-value world of the Hollywood studio systems and culture corporations, Israel’s works explore the trappings and conventions of celebrity, perception and fame in the context of a city so actively engaged in the manipulation of each.

Alex Israel, Self-Portraits (Installation View), via Peres Projects (more…)

George Condo, Downtown New York (2012), Copyright George Condo / ARS (Artists Rights Society), New York, 2013 via Sprueth Magers

For the past thirty years, George Condo has created visceral, challenging works that blend art history and theory with an irreverent worldview that make his sculptures and canvases explode with life.  Currently, the artist is exhibiting a selection of  his Drawing Paintings and bronze sculptures, created in 2012, for his third solo show with Sprüth Magers, Berlin. Condo has a long standing relationship with the gallery that started almost 30 years ago, when Monika Sprüth hosted one of Condo’s first solo exhibitions in Cologne in 1984. (more…)

California-based artist Alex Israel recently sat down with AnOther Magazine to talk about his new show in Berlin, his new series of self-portraits (one of which is on view as part of After-Hours 2:: Murals on the Bowery), and the close ties between his work and the film culture of his home city, Los Angeles.  “For me, going to the studio is a phrase that can only refer to going to a movie studio. That is why I made my work at Warner Bros. I am also a fan. I like movies and TV.” (more…)

Adrian Ghenie, Pie Fight Interior 8 (2012), Courtesy Pace Gallery

Romanian painter Adrian Ghenie’s first U.S. gallery exhibition, Adrian Ghenie: New Paintings, explores a dark, distorted side of modern European history, pulling images from publications, films, and artistic sources and blending them with his own personal memories and visceral artistic style. The exhibition is presented by Pacc Gallery, which has represented the artist since 2011.

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Ernesto Neto, for ever (2013), Courtesy Max Hetzler

A series of new drawings and sculptures by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto (1964) are currently on view at Galerie Max Hetzler in a solo exhibition entitled notes, stones and dots.  The exhibition sees Neto exploring the forms and movements generated from the act of dancing: “If we could feel our body in a state of dance,” he says, “we might gain a better balance.”

Ernesto Neto, animal nature (2013), Courtesy Max Hetzler

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