Akimblog
Berlin
Gareth Moore at Luttgenmeijer | Carsten Holler at Esther Schipper | Imi Knoebel at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Deutsche Guggenheim, and Galerie Fahnemann | Martin Kippenberger at Capitain Petzel | Instituto Divociado at Galerie Sandra Burgel
posted by Rodney LaTourelle - June 4th, 2009.
For the last five years, a collection of Berlin galleries have hosted Gallery-Weekend each spring. Collectors are flown in and shuttled around in black Audis to select exhibitions across the city. This year’s event was scheduled for the first of May, also a day of fierce demonstrations that culminated in violent stand-offs between protestors and riot police. Gallery-Weekend was initiated due to the noticable absence of home-grown collectors in Berlin and, while it is a fine way to ingratiate the city’s art scene in the global art system, it is probably one of the least interesting periods in the gallery season due to the commercial focus of most venues. That said, the opening day provided a funny juxtaposition: anti-capitalist mobs throwing stones in Kreuzberg, while now-deflated collectors toured in adjacent gallery zones
Gareth Moore (courtesy: Lüttgenmeijer)
However, there are of course a great variety of exhibitions in the frame of Gallery Weekend and in parallel, and several recommendable shows are still up. Gareth Moore’s recent exhibition at Lüttgenmeijer was conceived in relation to his studio practice and the modest space was carefully composed employing a diverse selection of work. There were numerous delights here, often using conceptual jokes, ridiculous juxtapositions, and odd relations between image, material, placement, and language to achieve poetic yet precise effects. Moore has a refined ability to create taut systems that activate his multiple concerns while maintaining a child-like approach and a natural playfullness that allows each work and the overall exhibition to be much more than cute one liners. For example, the work Nature Retreat uses an epynomous paint colour to cover a boulder-shaped plywood cut-out that is built like a prop from a school play. Nature is often portrayed in its culturally conceived matrix; Moore’s work maintains appearance as no less than a literal, obvious, and earnest deception.
Carsten Höller, Gesangskanarienmobile, 2009 (courtesy: Esther Schipper)
Carsten Höller is known for a more scientific approach to natural systems, yet he usually visualizes the abstract properties of the natural world in a highly sensual and experiential way. In Vogel Pilz Mathematik, on display at Esther Schipper, the centrepiece is a large mobile from which round cages hang, each containing a live canary. Each canary was chosen for its particular “dialect“ and Höller concieved of the arrangement as a method “for measuring the dimensions of song“. The form of the mobile is based on a formula of doubling and nearby paintings concentrate this technique graphically in contrast to the “living sculpture“ of the ceaselessly interacting birds.
Imi Knoebel, No. 4, 2007, acrylic, aluminum, hard-fibre
The work of Imi Knoebel is omnipresent in Berlin at the moment, with simultaneous exhibitions at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Deutsche Guggenheim, and at Galerie Fahnemann. A leading figure for a generation of abstract artists, Knoebel, a contemporary of Jörg Immendorff and Blinky Palermo, has consistently explored questions of form, colour, and space, often employing a repeatable formal system to articulate connections between the media of painting and sculpture. Colour is often carefully employed using mininal strategies that construct complex spatial relationships, not to attain cold perfection á la Judd, but to concentrate inter-relationshops between experience, space, and the object. At all three sites, the artist has painted the windows with a translucent white paint that creates a diffused and even light. At the Neue Nationalgalerie, this translucency has a dramatic affect, allowing the entire glass pavillion to beome a haunting staging ground for the few oddly placed works.
Martin Kippenberger, Tankstelle Martin Boorman, 1986 (courtesy: Capitain Petzel)
Knoebel studied under Joseph Beuys and he sought to continue his teacher’s agitation and social concerns, yet he used rigorous formal reduction towards a purifying zero point. Martin Kippenberger has been called the anti-Beuys; his strategy was not “every human is an artist“ but maybe “every artist is a human“. Kippenberger’s prolific output and his excessive lifestyle is legendary. At Capitain Petzel, a recent addition to the handful of blue-chip galleries in the city, a collection of Kippenberger’s work from his “Magical Misery Tour“ through Brazil is on display. Among the spoils are countless circular cardboard sheets silk screened and painted with advertizing slogans and logos from everyday Brazilian products. Also on exhibit is an image and cardborard sculpture from Tankstelle Martin Boorman/Gas Station Martin Boorman that pictures a gas station Kippenberger acquired and named after a prominent Nazi who was rumoured to have fled to Brazil. Kippenberger framed this issue by giving Boorman a camouflage address and enterprise, allegedly installing a telephone line and insisting employees answered calls with “Tankstelle Martin Boorman.“
Instituto Divorciado, We Improve Your Work, 2009 (courtest: Galerie Sandra Bürgel)
It is clear that the cult of personality that Kippenberger personifies is one of the main strategies in the art system for inflating the value of art. A recent exhibition at Galerie Sandra Bürgel that opened just before the Gallery-Weekend provided an illuminating anti-dote to the commonly received ideas of authorship, control, and commodity. Diego Fernandez and Ian Szydlowski of the Instituto Divorciado invited a variety of artists to submit work for an exhibition titled We Improve Your Work stipulating that the artists must relinquish all control and that they would intervene in the works. Disregarding any instructions for the artworks by the artists, Instituto Divorciado immediately coated all works with a distinct yet muted colour, thereby negating all content and leveling the difference between the pieces to a relation of shape and colour. Invoking the notion of “stupid as a painter“, the repainting eliminated individual authorial agency, renegotiating excessive qualities with the flavour of the “generic“ and provoking a lively and much needed discourse on value.
Rodney LaTourelle is an artist, writer and designer based in Berlin and Winnipeg. He writes frequently for artist's catalogues, and is a regular correspondent for BorderCrossings and C Magazine
Gallery-Weekend: http://www.gallery-weekend-berlin.de/
Lüttgenmeijer: http://www.luettgenmeijer.com/
Gareth Moore continues until June 20.
Esther Schipper: http://www.estherschipper.com/
Carsten Höller continues until June 20.
Neue Nationalgalerie: : http://www.neue-nationalgalerie.de/
Deutsche Guggenheim: http://www.deutsche-guggenheim-berlin.de/e/
Imi Knoebel continues until June 26.
Galerie Fahnemann: http://www.galerie-fahnemann.de/
Imi Knoebel continues until July 3.
Capitain Petzel: http://www.capitainpetzel.de/
Martin Kippenberger continues until June 13.
Galerie Sandra Bürgel: http://www.galerie-buergel.de/
Instituto Divorciado continues until June 6.