Galerie Max Hetzler opened three exhibitions across four locations in Berlin, presenting different artists who work with various media. Their Potsdamers Straße location is hosting an exhibition of pictures by the acclaimed photographer Thomas Struth. His practice revolves around the relationship between people and their environment, and this exhibition allows us to see it across his entire practice. His photographs project us in the rooms of nuclear test centres and aerospace buildings, where the chaos of the machinery feels overpowering. This series is followed by his Museum Photographs, making us reflect on our own act of watching and confronting civilization across different ages. Stunning are also his portraits from the ‘80s, where his keen eye depicts with poetry the subtle yet powerful dynamics between photographer and subject.
At their two locations in Bleibtreustraße and Goethe Straße, the gallery is presenting the powerful sculptural work of Leilah Babirye. Her practice is deeply intertwined with her life experiences as an Ugandan LGBTQ+ artist who was forced to flee her home country. Her sculptures are an homage to the vibrant community she belongs to, representing some of its members through her sculptural portraits and a series of paintings. The “Gorgeous Grotesque” that gives the exhibition its title can be noticed in her stunning ability to use old and disused materials while giving them a new life and revealing an unexpected beauty.
In their third exhibition, Celso and the past by Sergey Kononov, the artist uses paintings instead, and conveys with its intimate portraits the subtle balance between solitude and togetherness, homaging the youth of this time that has been forced to deal with times of socio-political turbulence. Yet, the Ukrainian artist decides to present them in these moments of stillness, sometimes of loneliness, and sometimes of connection, despite all the odds they are facing.
KOW is presenting the solo exhibition of Hudinilson Jr., titled Exercícios de me ver (Exercises of seeing oneself). The Brazilian artist works with intimacy as well, while reasoning on the vulnerability of exposure. As a member of the subculture and the underground scene, in a time when Brazil was going through a dictatorship, his work is a powerful representation of the interconnection between public and private. His practice is based on the use of his own body, by printing it over and over again with Xerox machines, in all its fragments and distortions. His work is an act of powerful resistance in an era when marginalized bodies were made invisible or exposed to scrutiny and danger. His work resonates with the most hidden chords of our own selves, making us question the impact of our own bodies, which are, still to this day, physical and metaphorical battlegrounds.
Dealing with the dissection of bodies, this time through the power of a collective practice, is the work of Iranian artists Tirdad Hashemi, Soufia Erfanina and Mahsa Saloor. With their shared exhibition Isolated bodies, waiting for a touch, the three artists powerfully confront us with the pain that life puts us through, while fighting it together. Their work and life are in fact deeply intertwined: Hashemi and Erfanina are a couple, and the dialogue that takes place within the exhibition is also centered around this human connection. Bodies are shown through their weaknesses, in this specific case intestine disorders, which become a powerful practical and metaphorical thread across the entire exhibition. In the drawings, we see intestines drifting outside of the bodies, matching the flow of the poetic sentences written on the wall. Their dialoguing practice spreads all over the gallery space and it is a hymn to the power of love and solidarity in the face of physical illnesses and societal discrimination.
Projecting us in an unsettling world of high technology is the work Retinal Rivalry by Cyprien Gillard, debuting for the first time in Germany at Sprüth Magers. Shot at 120 frames per second – much more than a human eye can process – and experienced through 3D glasses, his video installation is an investigation of the visual perception phenomenon that occurs when our brain receives conflicting images at the same time. Instead of blending them, our brain picks one over the other, causing disturbance and confusion. The video summarizes these dynamics and challenges our memory, while investigating the endless life cycles of creation and destruction.
Their second exhibition, Seven Springs by Michail Pirgelis, is a contemporary take on minimalist sculpture, though rooted in reality. His sculptures are created with pieces of disused airplanes, collected from an aircraft boneyard in the US. Segmented and fragmented with geometrical precision, his sculptures become a different kind of ready-made, creating an immersive installation, completed with the use of wallpapers. This way, his practice becomes an exploration of the medium in itself and of its ability to affect space.
Galerie Nagel Draxler is presenting the work of the acclaimed artists, Martha Rosler and Nadya Tolokonnikova, in their two spaces. With Wanted, Nadya Tolokonnikova deals with her traumatic experience of being incarcerated in a gulag, as a member of the dissident group Pussy Riot. For this exhibition, she recreated her former cell in the gallery, filling it with slogans of freedom, letters, documents and pictures of what she endured. She also transforms symbols of resistance into art objects. Particularly stunning are her Riot Shields, tools of state control reimagined as artifacts of defiance. Paired with these artworks are also her molotov kits and her paintings, where she uses irony to confront the issue of oppression put in place by dictatorial regimes - a reality she lived through her own skin and that still affects many people around the world.
At the same time, the gallery is presenting Rights of Passage by artist Martha Rosler, in their Kabinett. Shot with a toy camera, her pictures are a documentation of her commute between Brooklyn and New Jersey. For her, roads are places of stasis, where we are stuck while waiting for a traffic jam to finish. In these moments of nothingness and of in-betweenness she is nonetheless able to find poetry and irony, making us see the banality of this commonly shared experience in a new and intriguing light. Her work shows us a different kind of resistance, and fights against the underwhelming flow of our daily routine, giving it a new meaning.
A contemporary jump straight into the past is the exhibition La Bocca di Berlino by Nicola Samorì at EIGEN+ART. His work, a mixture of sculpture and painting, has the capability to get under your skin in the most impactful way. His depictions are directly connected to the history of art, from ancient Greek culture to baroque images. Incredibly powerful is the series of paintings on stone slabs, functioning as a teeth structure that protects a sphinx hanging on the central wall. The voids and the interruptions, which are part of the stones themselves, create a powerful landscape, where we are confronted directly with suffering as a shared human experience. Yet, Samorì's work remains incredibly charming, urging us to reflect on the practical and etymological meaning hidden behind the word “passion”. It derives from “pathos”, a Greek word that encompasses all the nuances between physical suffering, submission, and living intensely, with desire, even a positive feeling. The exhibition perfectly represents it all, leaving us in a state of ambiguous unsettlement and making us connect in a powerful way to humanity's past, in all its communal life experiences.
On the occasion of its first participation in Berlin Gallery Weekend, NOME debuted a solo exhibition of artist and archivist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. Known for her immersive installations, the artist confronts us, through a sense of discomfort, with the honest and unfiltered emotions we are too afraid to express. Her ability to bring to the surface the incoherence and the shame generated by public themes that might seem divisive is striking. Her haunting characters are there to personify this inner turmoil, making us question our empathy and urging us to face our fears. Through her work, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley tackles racism, transphobia, politics, and war, holding up a mirror to the issues of our time. With Uncensored, she also inspires us to try and do better, as human beings living in troubling times.
This month’s selection of exhibitions to see in Berlin presented us with the problems and incoherencies of human life, leaving us with many questions and doubts. Yet, these exhibitions also filled us with hope and solidarity, suggesting possible answers to difficult questions. They presented us with the infinite possibilities of expression that art grants us through its multiple means, from sculpture to technology, from painting to photography, and back again. Don’t miss the chance to check out our selection of highlights from Berlin Gallery Weekend, and see where this journey takes you.
