The Curated Art Walk by BlueLobster Art

Curated by Kseniia Koma from BlueLobster Art, the art walk officially kicked off after the delicious coffee started at THE BARN Potsdamer Platz. Our journey flowing from Potsdamer Platz toward Potsdamer Strasse led to our first stop, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, featuring the exhibition Μέτοικε by Berlin-based artist Wu Tsang. The works culminate years of research into the expanded myth of Carmen, revisiting the 1875 opera figure by Georges Bizet and her legacy across music, stage, and cinema, bringing together two moving-image and multichannel sound installations titled On our way to the general strike and La gran mentira de la muerte. Following this emotional journey into the world of Carmen from costume to video, our next stop was also on Schöneberger Ufer.

Barbara Wien Gallery, which started its journey as an art bookshop, served as our second stop. Here, we explored Andreas Eriksson's Horizontal Fold while listening to Wien herself, discovering the Swedish visual artist's first exhibition with the gallery. Horizontal Fold is asubstantial presentation of Eriksson's practice, bringing together recent and newly produced works in painting, photography, weaving, and sculpture, alongside more than two decades of the artist's publications.

Following this came a striking and deep exhibition on masculinity from PSM Gallery: Stepping into PSM Gallery, we encountered Inga Somdyala’s powerful solo exhibition, The Mountains of My Youth, which takes ulwaluko (the traditional Xhosa rite of passage into manhood) as its conceptual starting point. The gallery space instantly immerses visitors in an intense, bleeding field of red where everyday objects take on profound psychological weight, from a disassembled school desk bearing the stripes of an Aranda blanket to fourteen closed okapi knives carrying dormant potential.

As we moved through the exhibition, exploring paintings textured with oxides, charcoal, and ash, the physical journey mirrored the transition between institutional education and ancestral knowledge. The experience culminated at the farthest point of the gallery, where the resonant voices of men singing in unison filled the space, turning the gallery into a shared, communal site of homecoming and profound personal transformation.

Following PSM, the walking route extended further as participants quenched their thirst with HEJhÄppi, a high-fiber prebiotic sparkling beverage containing no added sugar, artificial sweeteners, or caffeine. Packed with about 6 grams of digestion-supporting fiber and apple cider vinegar per can in varieties like raspberry, elderflower, pineapple-orange, and black currant, the drink refreshed us while stepping onto Potsdamer Strasse, where one of the most vital values of the CURIO-CITY Experiences fully solidified: the sense of community. Twenty curious minds brought together just an hour prior now knew each other well, exchanging personal experiences and stories about Berlin to forge new bonds.

Finally, before our short lunch break, our last gallery stop was Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in Berlin, running from August 13 through September 19, 2026, featuring a duo exhibition with artists Robert McNally and Charlie Roberts that explores their psyches, creative exhaustion, and what it takes to sustain a lifelong creative practice.

Taking its title references from Bob Dylan's song "All the Tired Horses" signifying creative frustration and Sebastian Mayr's German short film meditating on intimacy and vulnerability, Robert McNally re-examines past artistic struggles in Berlin with early pencil sketches and unconventional acrylic experiments mixed with toothpaste, while Charlie Roberts features narrative paintings like Ancient Evening depicting cyborg-like figures and recurring self-portrait motifs that ponder repetition and the passage of time.

The Best Sushis in Town: Bites & Drinks at Sticks’n’Sushi

As the clock ticked past two, we saluted the third discipline shaping our CURIO-CITY Experience after art and community: gastronomy. Upon leaving Mercator Höfe, we were greeted by Sticks'n'Sushi for an unforgettable lunch experience. Sticks'n'Sushi blends traditional Japanese sushi and grilled yakitori skewers with a relaxed, modern Danish design aesthetic.

Growing into an international group operating across Copenhagen, London, Cambridge, Oxford, Glasgow, and Berlin, including spots on Potsdamer Straße and Kantstraße, every interior is custom-designed for its neighborhood, offering a dual-focus menu of fresh raw fish, sushi rolls, sashimi, and charcoal-grilled skewers. At Sticks'n'Sushi, our community bonded over good food, good wine, and good connections whileexperiencing the best sushi in a warm, friendly environment, making it a true Columbist favorite for anyone whose path crosses Potsdamer Strasse and Kantstrasse.

Homage to Caravaggio at The Embassy of Italy in Berlin

Finally, we reached our destination: the Italian Embassy in Berlin. For the first time, the Embassy of Italy in Berlin is taking part in the official programme of Berlin Art Week with Caravaggio × Berlinde De Bruyckere, bringing Caravaggio's Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy into dialogue with a new work by Berlinde De Bruyckere.

The opening brought together representatives of institutions, the cultural sector, the art world, and the media, where Ambassador Fabrizio Bucci highlighted the transformation of the Embassy into an open cultural space capable of fostering new forms of expression. Curated by Tjioe Meyer Hecken and Felipe Schwager, the project brings together four centuries of art history around themes such as ecstasy, suffering, desire, and the metamorphosis of the body. Open by appointment until September 25.

We discovered all of this up close at the Italian Embassy through a special reception, listening to the stories of the artworks directly from embassy representatives, and thus bringing the second chapter of CURIO-CITY Experiences to a close. What remained were faces saying goodbye with promises to meet again, a community enchanted by art, a lingering taste of a sushi and wine hour, and curious eyes asking when the next edition will take place.

The Columbist is once again proud to examine the different layers of the city together, driven by its belief that content should not be shaped without community and its motto of being constantly curious. Endless thanks to BlueLobster Art, Sticks'n'Sushi, THE BARN, HEJhÄppi, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Barbara Wien Gallery, PSM Gallery, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, and the Italian Embassy in Berlin for this very special second edition.