This year the 1st of May is more than just an excuse to get wasted in public at midday; it is also the Berlin art scene's favorite holiday – the Gallery Weekend – and the first day of the last Month of Performance Art. Try to stay moderate and survive through the afternoon events and openings all the way to the afterparties. To put down any fear of missing out you might be having, help yourselves with our tips.

 

FRIDAY 24.04

18.00 Material @ Johann König, Berlin

WHY: The main idea of the group exhibition "Material" is simple and clear – it is literally about material. More specifically, it is about works that conceptually revolve around the material. Gold, silver, bronze, marble, aluminum, wood, iron, wax, copper, tin, brass, glass, ceramics, concrete, paper, white gold, gypsum, rubber, cast iron, linen and other materials form the starting point of these works. The show features works by David Adamo, Carl Andre, Isa Genzken, Daniel Turner et al.

Johann König, Berlin / Dessauer Str 6-7, 10963 Berlin, U Potsdamer Platz / open thrpough 27.06 / free entry / more info

 

SATURDAY 25.04

18.00 Josep Maynou – "The Ninja From Marrakech" @ GSL Projekt

WHY: "The Ninja from Marrakech" features Josep Maynou's new series of hand woven artworks created in the mountain villages of Morocco. Mixing graphics and references of international pop-culture with the cultural exchange of social practice, Maynou bridges the international lived experience between urban and rural communities. These connecting points become the starting point for storytelling of the cross-cultural mash up of both real and imagined experiences.

GSL Projekt / Novalisstrasse 7, 10115 Berlin, U Oranienburger Tor / open through 16.05 / free entry / more info

 

THURSDAY 30.04

18.00 Marguerite Humeau – "Echoes" @ DUVE Berlin

WHY: Marguerite Humeau researched natural bodily fluids that have the capability to heal and to enhance life. Their combination produces a potion “capable of healing any disease”. By referencing the hybrid gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt in the titles of her works, Humeau splices the oldest known human concept of the afterlife with the most recent dreams of regenerative medicine and biological engineering. Her retro-engineered afterlife comes along as a vision of a designed future in which we, too, become hybrids.

DUVE Berlin / Gitschiner Str. 94/94a (Entrance D, 1.5 floor), U Prinzenstrasse, 10969 Berlin / open through 05.06 / free entry / more info

 

18.00 SALOON @ Sexauer Gallery

WHY: SALOON is a group of young women of the Berlin art scene. Artists, trustees, journalists and scientists. SEXAUER Gallery presents 25 artists from the SALOON for the first time in a large exhibition during the Gallery Weekend. The name ironically refers to the Parisian Salon exhibitions of the 19th century, as well as to the American saloon of the Wild West, both mostly male domains that the SALOON women now symbolically take over.

Sexauer Gallery / Streustr. 90, 13086 Berlin, Station Friesickestraße Straßenbahn 12 & M13 / open through 22.05 / free entry / more info

 

FRIDAY 01.05

14.00 Month of Performance Art – Berlin: Anthology @ Various locations / Opening @ Gorlitzer Park

WHY: This year it is the 5th and final edition of the Month of Performance Art. It will present a diverse program of performances, site-specific interventions, discussions, talks, workshops, screenings and other experiments, by more than 300 artists, curators, organisers from around the world, at 13 venues across the city, and some 20 public spaces. The opening is  in the heart of Kreuzberg's May Day celebrations – expect all kinds of twists and turns.

Month of Performance Art – Berlin / ongoing until 31.05 / more info

 

17.00 Gallery Weekend Berlin @ Various locations

WHY: Each year on the first weekend of May, Berlin turns into a major hotspot for art fans and collectors from all over the world. More than 50 art venues throughout Berlin synchronize with exhibition openings and events. Besides the official list of participating galleries, many other spaces hop on this mad bandwagon with special events and parties, so don't forget to check out the unofficial Gallery Weekend listings as well.

Ongoing until 03.05 / free entry / more info

 

17.00 Martin Eder – "Those Bloody Colours" @ Galerie EIGEN + ART

WHY: In his recent works, Martin Eder refers to the growing influence of martial picture material and fantasy series in the media. The subject of bellicose women in a battle is omnipresent: in the flood of latest images of catastrophes and war, female figures recur constantly – as soldiers, as desperate mothers protecting their children or their village in border regions of the Middle East with weapons, or at another front at the Maidan fighting in improvised armaments made from road signs, gaffa tape, and plastic canisters.

Galerie EIGEN + ART / Auguststrasse 26, 10117 Berlin, U Rosenthaler Platz / ongoing until 23.05 / free entry / more info

 

17.00 Mark Flood – "Astroturf Yelp Review Says Yes" @ Peres Projects

WHY: Mark Flood has been mining the cult of celebrity since the early 1980s, physically and literally distorting publicity images through collage, reprinting and over-painting celebrity portraits and advertising. More recently, Flood has set his gaze on the logos of corporations, undermining the great lengths corporations go to control their image. Layers of coded visual and textual signifiers are superimposed on one another and lose their individual meaning, like driving down the highway of Houston’s billboard laden freeways where logos and corporate commands are lost in a speedy blur.

Peres Projects / Karl Marx Allee 82, 10243 Berlin, U Weberwiese / open through 13.06 / free entry / more info

 

18.00 Katharina Grosse – The Smoking Kid @ König Galerie at St. Agnes

WHY: During this year's Gallery Weekend, König Galerie will surely stand out from the crowd. In its new premises at St. Agnes Church, the gallery will present an exhibition by Katharina Grosse, who has become internationally known for her large, colorful, spatially expansive paintings that open a space for the paint to transgress the usual pictorial dimensions. In „The Smoking Kid“, Katharina Grosse presents paintings that appear as site-specific in the imposing exhibition site. Concurrently, the gallery will be showing works by the Berlin-based Danish artist Jeppe Hein.

St. Agnes / Alexandrinenstr. 118 – 221, 10969 Berlin, U Prinzenstr. / ongoing until 21.06 / free entry / more info

 

 

19.00 Picture Window Series #1: Military Eyes @ Manière Noire

WHY: In "Military Eyes", Franz John used the special perspectival situation of abandoned military bunkers. To get the desired images, he reduced the size of the observation slits of the cave-like structures until it became a camera obscura which projected the „military point of view“ directly onto the walls of the bunkers. Carvings, sketches, notes and accidental traces gave information about how generations of soldiers have lived and what they might have perceived, and were also references of collective perception standardized by the restricted views from observation slits.

Manière Noire / Waldenserstr. 7A, 10551 Berlin, U Turmstr. / open through 03.05 / more info