So March is here, spring is coming, the Berghain queue is already almost as long as it is in summer, but apparently people (ok, us included to an extent…) are still a bit lazy when it comes to going to art events. Speaking of Berghain, there’s a work inspired by the artist, Sarah Schönfeld’s experience working there that should inspire you to go check out NGBK and maybe get in the mood to go to the club. In addition to these altered “States of Mind”, there was an opening that felt like an airport lobby, some plants in strange pots, shiny neon plastics, NYE leftovers, and a proven symbiotic relationship between art and science. Let’s see where these events fall on our scale this week: + points for what might have been missed, and – points for what we dissed.

FRIDAY 01.03
It Is Only A State Of Mind @ NGBK-press preview
group show about artist experiments including works by Annie Goh, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Michal Heiman, Joachim Koester, Ofri Lapid, Susan MacWilliam, Matt Mullican, Lea Porsager, Patrick Rieve, Sarah Schönfeld, Rosemarie Trockel, Ute Waldhausen

artist Lea Porsager with her work T-F (type 3)

artist Annie Goh with her work Electromagnetic Microcosm
 

artist Patrick Rieve inside his work Raum und Richtung (5 Elemente)

co-curator Susanne Weiß (left), artist Susan MacWilliam (right)
 

+25 for the very intimate press preview…Now this is something that I know everyone else missed out on this week because I was the only member of the press who showed up! It was quite a contrast from the James Franco preview. So the rest of you press people who were invited but didn’t stop by, -25 points for you because it was a lovely morning! Six of the artists, the co-curators, and the NGBK staff were present to give a guided tour of the exhibition, providing a lot of interesting information on each work and how they related to the larger theme.
+7 for Patrick Rieve’s Raum und Richtung (5 Elemente)…The space created by hanging fabric and a carpet explores the spiritual and psychological meaning of color in space (the origins of the color choices being the Tibetan Buddhist five elements) and creates a unique and striking metaphysical experience that you really have to go experience yourself.
+15 for the coherent organization of the show and a theme that is not overbearing or forced…from the first work, Susan MacWilliam’s video After Image, exploring the superstition that the last image a person sees before they die lingers on the retina to the last work of the exhibition, Ofri Lapid’s Skyprism, in which a projection of archival footage of a black and white rainbow is diffracted through a prism, restoring the rainbow’s colors, the selection of pieces in the show are extremely varied and make us rethink our beliefs and what is often taken for granted.
 

Andreas Schultze & Peter Fischli/David Weiss @ Sprüth Magers –opening

+2 for the most pleasant airport lobby atmosphere…It probably wouldn’t feel so pleasant if you went to visit the gallery during normal opening hours and it wasn’t packed with chatty visitors. I am always anxious, bored, and restless at the airport, so despite being surrounded by projections of different international airport views that would normally make me uncomfortable, the combination of the wine and the company made me feel ok.

someone is
smiling for the camera!

-17 for the paintings…Maybe someone needs to explain to me why people like this?


+2 for the head flower pots…The interior-decoration-kitsch-thing works for me with regards to these silly plants in the head pots, and the icky-sicky-yellow wall painting behind them adds a nice touch; they gross me out in a good way.


Berta Fischer @ Galerie Barbara Weiss –opening

surprise, surprise, everyone is wearing black tonight

An interactive work where you can stick your leftover gum on the sculpture? No, it’s not.

-7 for either faulty construction or careless (or drunk?) gallery visitor (probably the latter)...I didn’t see it happen, but someone broke the sculpture at the entrance. You can see on the left the tiny piece that the gallery assistants forgot to pick up, so maybe someone left with a tiny bit of sculpture...

+7 for combining three of my favorite things: plastic, iridescence, and bright colors…
David Ostrowski  'I'm OK.' Moments later, he was shot - opening
Peres Projects re-opening at new space at Karl Marx Allee

+10 the new space looks amazing. Peres brought big back, or at least bigger- in a space previously hosting 2 galleries. 
+2 Peres had to press restart a few times these years, and he does it with grace and success. Good for him. (maybe not always good for his artists, but well)

-  I don't know why Ostrowski titled his solo show 'I'm OK.' Moments later, he was shot. A guilty conscience maybe? No points just saying. 
- Now his is the kind of work, how would artsy call it... Enlarged-Coffee-Cup-Stains-Abstraction, that I am always prepared to be bored with. But as a whole, in this magnificent space, with the strong lighting- it worked! Again no points subtracted. 
- But I really want to subtract something... Either -2 for not only using the Seinfeld "show about nothing" dialog as a press release, but also printing it in huge, frame it and make some poor bastard buy it OR -2 for hanging some of the pieces in the middle of the two (now united) spaces re-dividing and obstracting the view at his own works. Your choise. 

 

SATURDAY 02.03

Diango Hernandez, Komplette Zimmer @ Capitain Petzel-opening

Susanne Prinz (of L40) with the artist
 

+5 for the best smelling gallery crowd…Too much perfume is much preferred to bad body odor.

+3 for the artist’s statement in addition to a press release…If the artist is a good writer and knows what they are doing, an artist statement is much more informative and insightful than the press release. More galleries should provide this.

+3 for the Silent Party installation in the basement…It warms my heart a bit to know that someone is preparing an art work on New Year’s Day; in Hernandez’s case it is the collection of discarded champagne clasps.

SUNDAY 03.03

Luca Pozzi, Daniele Oriti, Joao Magueijo, Solvej Helweg Ovesen, Paolo Chiasera @ Grimmuseum –talk

discussion about the infrastructure in art and science on the occasion of Luca Pozzi’s Messages of Gravity on view at Grimmuseum
 
 

+8 for the variety of speakers and everyone fitting into their expected role…the scientists gave concise, “dumbed down for the art audience” power point presentations, the curator spoke a lot about her upcoming exhibition project (and she had books with her, Kierkegaard’s Either/Or…one of my favorites!), the visiting artist went on and on about one painting and I had no clue what he was talking about, and Luca Pozzi’s talk was somewhere at the intersection of everyone else’s presentations. He made some interesting connections between science and art, notably Galileo’s drawings of moon phases paired with Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro on faces.

+8 for a productive relationship between the artist and scientists…Pozzi needs these researchers to help him work out the technical aspects of his work, and looking at Pozzi’s work helps the researchers better understand what they are working on. Everyone benefits!