It is finally springtime!! Look outside your window or lift your head from your smartphone, it is sunny in Berlin and the nature is alive again!

May 6: GREEN

Floating Green - Roman Verostko @DAM Gallery

Looks like we have finally left winter behind our backs…and what is the color of life and spring?? Green, of course! The trees are beautified by leaves and flowers, parks adorned by fields of green grass and packed with children playing and joyful people spending their free-time pretending they don’t live in a big city. 

Weather was clement with us during the Gallery Weekend and Myfest, and I hope you all got the chance to leave your apartment and get around the city like I did.

My areas of exploration were Prenzlauer Berg, breaching to Mitte, followed by a movement to West, Schöneberg, where I hadn’t yet ventured myself during my time in Berlin.

“The Stars Were Aligned for a Century of New Beginnings”, by Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year 2016, Basim Magdy, at Deutsche Bank KunstHalle was one of my favourite. The exhibition is full of colours, appealing images and artworks in varied media, but it also has a profound meaning that cannot leave you indifferent.

Very interesting were also Philippe Decrauzat at Mehdi Chouakri, and Tomás Saraceno (one of my favourite artists by the way) at Esther Schipper.

An Apology to a Love Story that Crashed into a Whale - Basim Magdy @Deutsch Bank KunstHalle

Few random facts about the colour green:

-Green is restful for the eyes, it is tested that a green environment reduces fatigue
-Green was chosen in traffic-lights because it could not be mistaken with red, the colour of danger
-The only green pigment in nature is chlorophyll and animal are not able to use it; insects use a mix of light blue and yellow pigments, green birds plumage is an effect of light refraction, amphibia and reptiles skins have a light blue background with a yellow filter on top
-The tradition of green gambling table is said to have started in 16th century Venice
-No natural source of green food colouring is approved in the USA, but it is in Europe

Famous artworks with green as predominant colour:

-Mont Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cézanne, 1902-04
-The Dream, Henri Rousseau, 1910
-Statue of Liberty, Keith Haring, 1986
-HETERODOXY, Gilbert and George, 2005
-Note 1 (from the series III Notes from Salalah), Cy Twombly, 2005-2007

Recycling History - Yi Dai @House of Egorn