Experimenting with my ideas outside of an exhibition remit or deadline is something I have found to be quite challenging, as the absence of deadlines and tight schedules is something that I have not experienced in a long time. It is leading me to question my practice, my preferred lifestyle, and my aspirations as a practitioner. Moving here has been a challenging experience so far, in both positive and negative ways. One of my MA lecturers once said to me ‘On this course, you must pull your practice apart in order to reassemble it’. The residency at The Berlin Office is providing me with that same opportunity.
I have been to a few art openings over the past couple of weeks. There were over 150 art openings on Friday 5th September in Berlin. Impossible to see all of them, but I managed to get around a few with friends on this very exciting and busy evening that marked the end of the summer break. We started at DAAD gallery, where artist Shimabuku had an exhibition entitled Sea, Sky, Language and so on. The most striking piece was a film of the artist flying a kite, which appeared to be a life-sized portrait of the artist himself. The figure drifted in the air, as if floating, before falling to the ground again. The artist uses elemental forces; recording the direct effect his actions have when interacting with objects and materials. The text accompanying the show suggests to the viewer that the work is striving to find a new poetical language, and that ultimately the works aims are dependant on the viewers interpretation of the visual imagery presented.
Five openings later a group of us arrived at Zwanzigquadratmeter (20 cubic meters). 20qm is an artist’s studio and project space in Berlin-Friedrichshein, consisting of two square rooms. Artists are invited to exhibit in the downstairs room, providing a living, office, or studio in the upstairs room should they need it. The artist exhibiting this week was Guillaume Pilet, presenting a series of prints and wall-mounted sculptures made out of baked dough. See www.20qmberlin.comfor more images.
Curator Eric Emery and Artist Guillaume Pilet stood in front of These Foolish Things, 2008.
Eric Emery, the curator of 20qm, had an exhibition opening on Friday night at Substitut on Torstrasse. The space itself was really interesting- the open space at the front of the building was a white cube space, with grey floors and big windows. Eric’s works were situated here; a fibre glass cast of a tree that had been involved in a car accident, spray painted the same colour as the car that had damaged it. Two wall paintings accompanied this work, spray-painted to represent the impact traces documented on the circuit after Ayrton Senna’s fatal formula 1 crash in 1994, and Jacques Villeneuve’s 2006 accident at the Canadian Grand Prix. The works were very stylish, constructed to perfection. The space and exhibiton continued up the stairs, and another environment completely contrasted the white cube space in the front section of the gallery. The space was raw, unpainted, and dark. There was a damp smell to the air, the perfect environment for the plants and earth that were exhibited as part of Aurelio Kopainig’s work. The tension between the rough architecture of the space and the natural artifacts infiltrating it worked extremely well. A slide show of images depicting trees constrained and controlled in city environments, presented in one of the small rooms situated at the back of the gallery, concluded this well curated show.
Other openings I have attended include the ABC Exhibition at Postbahnhof on Gleisdreieck. The old train station was a fantastic space and a great site for the show, which included artists such as Darren Almond, Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Liam Gillick, and Carsten Höller. I wish I had gone back to the show after the opening, as it was very difficult to see or concentrate on a lot of the works due to the amount of people filling the space.
