this week at the galleries

er, ok. you got me. it's not a week since i last posted about art i've seen in berlin. in fact, it's been ages. i kinda went into lock-down for this exhibition and pretty much didn't leave my little studio apartment for a week.

but since the opening, i've been seeing a few things here and there:

silberkuppe - living well is the best revenge

 the cutest, smallest gallery space on skalitzer straße, near chert/motto for you local berlin kids, this show was ace. an investigation into the line between public/private, through the action of jogging and everything that goes with it - including all the fashion/marketing/rah-rah-rah. in fact, a lot of similar ideas to the ones i work on with sound. the beautiful block-mounted photo letters that 'ran' through the little space were total gems.

skalitzer 140_temporary - R.E.B.E.A.T I.T


this is another great space on skalitzer straße, this time they have just a one-night only exhibition each tuesday. it's well set-up, simple and clear. last week they had two projections in the back Hof, which was brilliant and I encouraged them to do that again.

i'm looking forward to seeing what else is in the space. i might even break my own 'no more shows this year' promise and exhibit something myself..

alte national galerie - permanent collection//tino sehgal



i hadn't managed to get to any of the big olde worldy galleries in berlin until now. but, i've since bought a yearly ticket and am going to squeeze them all in before i leave. thankfully, having a friend here as a tourist kicked me in the right direction.



the presence of the ongoing tino sehgal work at the national galerie was a clear starting point. i bloody love tino sehgal's work and have now been fortunate enough to experience and engage with two of them thus far [last year at the marian goodman galerie in paris]. the work at the alte is a reproduction/replication/reintroduction of the 2002 work 'this is propaganda' - a song-based work in which the situation of a place is changed through the singing of a note by a performer.




obviously i saw some other amazing work in the gallery - my personal highlight being the caspar david friendrich paintings of the monk staring out at sea and the abbey in the oak forest. they're pretty damned exquisite and really difficult to see as paintings. i got told off for going too close, but i just had to get in an see the surface. layers and layers of varnish (and time) means that these works are photograph-esque. actually i couldn't help but think about todd mcmillan's performance version of the monk, especially as the paintings seemed more like videos than something made with goopy stuff.

the romantic paintings were also pretty amazing and i made an interesting link between romanticism and hipsterdom that i'm in the process of unpacking.




oh, and there's a nan goldin exhibition on at the berlinische galerie. we went to see her talk, but it was sold out, so instead of sorting out how to really deal with that, they locked the doors to the place. we snuck in and made it to the shop, but no further - they weren't letting anyone else in until an unspecified moment. weird, weird, weird experience i tell you.

but that raumlabour jumping castle geometry outside the place was fun!