03.2022

CLEAN HANDS, CLEAN CONSCIENCE

The skincare products of Zurich-based company Soeder are manufactured locally, contain only natural ingredients and can be refilled throughout Switzerland. Be it soaps, creams, disinfectants, deodorants or lubricants, the team behind founders Hanna and Johann is constantly on the lookout for the latest aromas, often in collaboration with chef friends and other creatives, or even their favourite nightclub. While the first soaps were conceived in their home kitchen, Soeder now runs its own factory just outside of town and is expanding its refill system across Europe. So be sure to keep your bottle.

03.2022

ARCHITECTURE IS ALL OVER BASEL

The first Basel Pavilion, presented on the Dreispitz site. Rendering © isla

How do globalisation, digitalisation, migration, climate change and the pandemic affect the built and unbuilt spaces of our urban environment? The inaugural edition of Architekturwoche Basel will address these questions under the title “Reale Räume” with a focus on three current development sites in Basel and the opening of the first Basel Pavilion. Various formats including tours, moderated talks and roundtables encourage an open dialogue between experts and local protagonists.

02.2022

DRAWING, DRAPING AND REMEMBERING

Rosemary Mayer, Untitled (08.26.71), 1971, Estate of Rosemary Mayer, Photo: Estate of Rosemary Mayer

Rosemary Mayer, Balancing, 1972, Estate of Rosemary Mayer, Photo: Trevor Lloyd and Andrea Rossetti / Chert Lüdde

Rosemary Mayer, Self Portrait, ca. 1979, Estate of Rosemary Mayer, Photo: Rosemary Mayer

“Rosemary Mayer: Ways of Attaching” is the first institutional retrospective devoted to the 1943 New York-born artist. The exhibition in the Ludwig Forum Aachen shows an extensive overview of her many drawings, the complete collection of her large-scale fabric sculptures and documentation of her performances. Mayer was one of the founding members of the renowned all-women cooperative gallery A.I.R., weaving feminist activism with a subtle and poetic approach, into her artistic practice.

02.2022

CHERTLÜDDE GOES SCHÖNEBERG

Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano, 20th of May 2016 (Cherry), 2020; Installation view; Courtesy of Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano, Berlin ChertLüdde, Belin and Kamel Mennour, Paris; Photo by ImagenSubliminal

Annette Frick, We remember Ovo and the many other Drag Queens and performers who died from complications with HIV, 2001; Courtesy the artist and ChertLüdde

After 13 years in Kreuzberg, ChertLüdde moves to the former cult costume and party store Deko Behrendt in Schöneberg. The first show, “Die Blüten von Berlin”, by artist duo Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano and the photographer Annette Frick pays tribute to the gallery’s previous inhabiter. In the new space, the Bungalow series dedicated to young artists continues alongside the bookstore, now located at the entrance. In parallel, a new program called Deko now replaces the front sign with outdoor artistic interventions.

02.2022

PLASTIC FANTASTIC?

Shellworks, jars made from Vivomer, a bioplastic produced with the help of microbes, 2021 © Shellworks, Photo: Catharina Pavitschitz

The Ocean Cleanup, system 002 deployed for testing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 2021 © The Ocean Cleanup

Edward Hack, Pineapple syrup bottle, c. 1958; Courtesy of Museum of Design in Plastics, Arts University Bournemouth

Precious Plastic, shredded plastic; Courtesy of Precious Plastic

Plastics have shaped our daily lives like no other material: from packaging to footwear, furniture, automobiles, or architecture. A symbol of carefree consumerism and revolutionary innovation, plastics have spurred the imagination of designers for decades. Today, we are questioning ourselves how we are to restrict our future use of plastic to those areas where their use is essential. With “Plastic: Remaking Our World” the Vitra Design Museum takes a look at the past of this controversial material and gives an outlook to the possibilities design offers.

02.2022

STRIKE A POSE

August Sander, Ohne Titel (Raoul Hausmann als Tänzer), 1929 © Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Köln; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 202

F.C. Gundlach, Charme, Chiffon und Phantasie, 1956 © Stiftung F.C. Gundlach, Hamburg

Rolf von Bergmann, Run-a-Ways (Serientitel), New York 1979 © Berlinische Galerie / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022

The role of fashion as a means of expression and representation in arts is illustrated in the many paintings and drawings within the Berlinische Galerie collection – from the cool Dada dandies of the 1920s to avant-garde clothing designs in contemporary art. The exhibition “Images in Fashion – Clothing in Art” sheds light on artists’ relationship to fashion and its influence on art over the last century. How do artists dress? How is fashion used as a medium today?

02.2022

MADE IN GERMANY

With a love of detail and a fresh eye for familiar typologies, Kevin Rack and Johann Kuhn founded the design company Blockbau in 2020 after studying architecture. The duo from Karlsruhe specialises in furniture design and develops all products themselves or in collaboration with young designers. Production takes place in southern Germany: for this, the two work with regional partners, some of which have been involved in furniture production for generations.

01.2022

MAERZMUSIK: VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE RELATIONS

Berliner Festspiele’s MaerzMusik – Festival for Time Issues 2022 focuses on the visible and invisible relations that hold everything together, in music and beyond. With featured artists and guests such as Éliane Radigue, Benjamin Patterson, Klangforum Wien and ONCEIM, the festival presents a program within which relationality can be rethought, redrawn and artistically experimented with.

01.2022

OUT IN THE OPEN: GEORGIA O’KEEFFE’S RETROSPECTIVE

Georgia O’Keeffe with Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow, 1960 © Tony Vaccaro

Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, NM. Gift of The Burnett Foundation, 1997, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / 2021, ProLitteris, Zurich, Photo: Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe / Art Resource, NY

Oriental Poppies, 1927, Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Museum purchase. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / 2021, ProLitteris, Zurich

Pelvis with a Distance, 1943, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Gift of Anne Marmon Greenleaf in memory of Caroline Marmon Fesler, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / 2021, ProLitteris, Zurich

From her 1915 abstract experiments to her late works in the 1970s, Georgia O’Keeffe at the Fondation Beyeler is a rare opportunity to discover in such depth the career of one of the most important landscape and nature painters of the 20th century. Arranged topographically, the vast retrospective is set to explore Texas, South Carolina, or New York as well as the majestic scenery of New Mexico, under O’Keeffe’s innovative gaze.

12.2021

LIGHTS ON

Robert Irwin, Light and Space (Kraftwerk Berlin), 2021. Commissioned by LAS (Light Art Space). © Photo: Timo Ohler. VG Bild-Kunst, 2021.

LAS presents the largest work by pioneering American artist Robert Irwin exhibited in Europe to date. The early proponent of site-specific installations continues with Light and Space (Kraftwerk Berlin), the series he initiated in 2007. The work presented features for the first time blue and white fluorescent lights, rhythmically arranged on a double-sided free-standing wall. In a dialogue with the industrial architecture of Kraftwerk Berlin, Irwin uses the effects of light to explore human perception and the use of space.

11.2021

SCULPTURES TO SAVOUR FROM PARS PRALINEN

With pars, the artist and confectioner Kristiane Kegelmann combines her artistic practice and passion for confectionery in chocolate sculptures. Her pursuit of the unrecognisable and juxtaposition between permanent and ephemeral materials is made apparent in each praline edition, handmade in her Berlin factory. pars pralines boast intense aromas of chocolate and seasonal ingredients from crystallised dill blossom to earthy red beets.

11.2021

MAKING AI TANGIBLE

To encourage a museum-centered encounter with the phenomenon of artificial intelligence, Berlin-based scenographers chezweitz have created a spatial experience for the Deutsche Hygiene Museum’s current special exhibition “Artificial Intelligence: Machine. Learning. Human Dreams”. chezweitz’ use of differing illumination methods for each of the five exhibition chapters renders the presented objects, artworks, and audiovisual media to become intuitively accessible for visitors, allowing sensual and unmediated access to questions about AI.

11.2021

“The New Infinity” goes Athens

After transforming the Zeiss-Großplanetarium Berlin into a “gallery of the future” last September, the planetary format of the Berliner Festspiele will be hosted for the first time at the Eugenides Foundation’s “New Digital Planetarium” in Athens. The venue is built up from a 278-seat amphitheatre and equipped with state-of-the-art technology. In partnership with the 7th Athens Biennale ECLIPSE, Onassis Culture and the Eugenides Foundation “The New Infinity Athens” aims to expand the horizon of its audience by exploring the use of planetaria for artistic purposes.

11.2021

PERFORMATIVE DISCOURSES IN VENICE

This year’s edition of the Goethe Institute’s programme series Performing Architecture cooperated with 2038, the German Pavilion at the Architecture Biennial in Venice: throughout November, various performances within the urban realm physically negotiate questions of accessibility and participation. During the “Conference of the Absent”—which marks both, highlight and conclusion of the series—Rimini Protokoll performs a staged conference within the German Pavilion using the offline tools of theatre to address global collaboration in times of crisis.

10.2021

GOYA: CONTEMPORARY MASTER

Portrait of Doña Antonia Zárate y Aguirre, ca. 1805, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, Presented, Sir Alfred and Lady Beit, 1987 (Beit Collection) © National Gallery of Ireland NGI.4539

Self-Portrait (Autorretrato), 1815, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid © Photographic Archive. Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid

Witches’ Flight (Vuelo de Brujas), 1797–1798, Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid © Photographic Archive. Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid

Rarely shown paintings from private collections and iconic key works by Francisco de Goya come together at the Foundation Beyeler in one of the most important retrospectives devoted to the artist to date. Even 275 years after his birth, his influence and standing as an “artist’s artist” does not cease. Goya remains a major reference for many contemporary artists, among them Philippe Parreno. Commissioned on the occasion of the show, Parreno premiered “La Quinta del Sordo”, a film on Goya’s iconic black paintings series (“Pinturas Negras”, 1819–1824).