Gallery Weekend once again showed what Berlin is capable of. It gathered the finest of the Berlin art scene in an entire week packed with exciting events all over the city, which culminated with the grand Weekend, and ended festively with May 1st. Here are just some of the highlights in an attempt to capture the magic of it all.

Our favorite spot in Moabit outshined itself for the Gallery Weekend with the show "State of Mind" by Daniel Knorr (read more about it here). For those who missed the opening; our tip is to get in contact with the gallery owner Majla Zeneli for an enthusiastic presentation of the piece and the artist's impressive oeuvre. The show is open until 31.05.

Rainbow Unicorn is a creative studio and a newly opened gallery for contemporary visual arts with a name that could not be more inviting. Right in time for the Gallery Weekend, they celebrated their new space with an ambitious inaugural group show. We look forward to spending warm evenings getting lost in conversations at their next events. 

The 20th anniversary of the electronic music label raster-noton coincided with the Gallery Weekend, and their installation "white circle" at Halle am Berghain was considered by many one of the best shows seen last week. Same goes for the show at Galerie EIGEN + ART by the label's co-founder Carsten Nicolai. It was quite amusing to bump into Gerd Harry Lybke and the rest of the EIGEN + ART team at the Friday night party at Berghain, where we all met again after the Gallery Weekend openings to celebrate raster-noton's 20th birthday and the greatness of Berlin's music and art. 

Read more about the installation in our review. 

Last week we welcomed quite a few novelties; several new spaces opened, some of them temporarily, some permanently - such as Botschaft in Uferhallen in Wedding. A garage-sized space was not what we had in mind when we saw its location (a vast industrial complex) and the list of artists participating in the show (about 90?!), but somehow everything found its place. Spaces like OZEAN already proved that size is not all that important, and we fully support the newcomer. 

By hearing the sound of the water, the wind, and the odd sound of nothingness, the exhibition "Island Songs" by Nicolas Perret & Silvia Ploner transported us to a deserted island. The exhibition consists of a collaborative sound installation based on field recordings, and cultivates a field in-between documentary, sound art, and electroacoustic composition.

One night, two performances. A group of musicians improvising together, every15 minutes in a new direction. From bittersweet to moody, lazy, and doubtful; this night brought everything. The second performance: an installation of a dying brick (so he said) and a videoscreen of zoomed body elements.

"Bad bad bad Murphy" as the title of one of Hennig Strassburger’s works at Soy Capitan already builds up your imagination. The paintings are free of figuration or associating objects, familiar spheres and moods, although I am quite sure I saw a surfboard in his work, or was it a palmtree? Anyway, Strassburger’s work is very dynamic, and the show is a playful addition to the exhibition space of Soy Capitan.

LARRY bar turns every Wednesday into an exhibition space hosted by the artist Hannes Gruber. A welcoming place for after-opening drinks, or just to see some art. Last Wednesday it included a neon installation by Marte Kissing.

The exhibition by Karsten Konrad at SMAC consists of various spatial translations with the material of the everyday, suddenly becoming useless, but visually very attractive.

This weekend Schau Fenster turned into an interactive exhibition / studio space. A group of artists worked for six hours with one chair, a tripod and paint.

A double show featuring a frozen liquid yellow piece on the ground, a work by Christopher Fülleman. On the walls paintings by Jens Einhorn. Vigorous and with a sense of vulnerability.

There is beauty in everything; even in trash. A collection of colorful two-liter glass Coca-Cola bottles and painted trash filled the exhibition space of Peres Projects. An exhibition by American artist Mike Bouchet about our society’s collective materialism and consumer habits.

During the first night of the Gallery Weekend a crowd of people gathered in front of a parabolic basin filled with water, as if a holy ritual was about to be performed. Topics were pretty mundane, though: what to do and where to go next was vigourously discussed. Even hair coloring.

The exhibited piece consists of three main components, and generates three states of reflection: mirroring, distortion, and disturbance. Classic Nicolai.

"Only for Tourists" is the exhibition presenting various videos with an entertaining perspective on tourism by the artist Clemens Wilhelm. From happy naive backpackers, a gang of big game hunters, a time-traveling tourist, the world’s largest statue of the Pope, a hiker in the Scottish Highlands, Chinese pseudo savages, the Mona Lisa, Mongolian wrestlers, the Statue of Liberty and Santa Claus... I wished that being tourist would be a full-time job.

Exclusively for the Gallery Weekend, in order to support the arts (the best way we know of - free drinks & music till late), the neon lighting company Sygns transformed a space convenienty located in Linienstrasse into a pop-up bar, with the exhibition of works by Te Charuchart. 

Croy Nielsen showed "Completed Paintings" by Sebastian Black. It was not so easy to decipher that the overlapping forms in the paintings are in fact based on the image of a cartoon puppy. Do you see it now? No? Thought so. What we did see was a nice colour palette to borrow for the spring / summer outfits. 

One of the most memorable points of the Gallery Weekend was the discovery of Croy Nielsen's slightly creepy garage which served as a temporary exhibition space for the show by Megan Rooney. The artwork and the space created the perfect synergy, and made it much more exciting than a regular white cube show. You can see it until June 4th, when the space transforms back into a garage.

Happy to welcome a new gallery at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz: Nagel Draxler opened their second exhibition space just across the street, which is in the same block with Delmes & Zander, Yvonne Lambert, Spike Art Quarterly, Index Berlin, Roger Bundschuh Architects (the studio that designed the gallery), and the very first Bpigs office. We should not forget to mention BQ, Croy Nielsen, L40, and hopefully more to come. 

A show that speaks to pop culture and music geeks, by a rock musician-turned-artist Jim Lambie, in Gerhardsen Gerner's wonderful new space in Linienstrasse. Everyday objects and materials are transformed into sculptures and re-energized wih a punk attitude. Fun fact: on this occasion, the Berlin-based musicians Parra for Cuva and the duo Trash Lagoon released a new LP, for which Jim Lambie designed the cover.

One show noone missed and everybody talked about was Tobias Rehberger’s “presently”, a group exhibition including over 60 artists, designers, architects, musicians... Such as Franz Ackermann, Bernhard Wilhelm, Ai Weiwei, Sven Väth... The list goes on forever, and there was a LOT going on in the exhibition space. Not only because of the volume, but also the variety and creativity of works. If you happened to miss the show - imagine it as a wacky dream birthday where the coolest people showed up and everyone brought a present.