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

Witches’ Sabbath (El Aquelarre), 1797/98, Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid © Museo Lázaro Galdiano

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).

10.2021

THE ULTIMATE ULTRAMARINE

For the second Berlin branch of Aera Bread—a gluten-free bread manufacturer and café located at Rosenthaler Platz—the architecture duo Gonzalez Haase AAS designed a space that takes full advantage of its prominent location by making it impossible to be overlooked. The entire depth of the new store is made visible through a large storefront window, allowing its rich Lapis Lazuli blue interior to take centre stage. They applied monotone pigmented concrete in an intense blue colour embedded so consistently throughout the space that the room as a whole becomes a spatial sculpture.

10.2021

THE BERLINER FESTSPIELE INVADE THE ICC BERLIN

The ICC Berlin, © Noshe

Performance by Joulia Strauss © Eike Walkenhorst

The Berliner Festspiele have brought the ICC Berlin, an architectural icon and sleeping colossus, back to life. Celebrating their 70 year anniversary with a unique experience of art, dance, performance and film “The Sun Machine Is Coming Down” is a cultural milestone for the city of Berlin. 45 Berlin-based and international artists contributed to the interdisciplinary project, coming together in a conceptual 10-days-programme based on simultaneity, similar to the original architectural concept of the building by Ursulina Schüler-Witte and Ralf Schüler.

10.2021

WHAT’S NEW IN THE NECKARSTRASSE

On the ground floor of the AMERON Frankfurt Neckarvillen Boutique Hotel, glasses clink, chairs are shuffled, and the colourful lights of a neon artwork by Tobias Rehberger shine out onto the street in Frankfurt’s Bahnhofsviertel. Here, the French Bento Bar is redefining the term “Hotel Bar” with a lively atmosphere and exquisite bar menu that celebrates French elegance and Japanese finesse, accentuated through high-quality products and skilled craftsmanship that incorporate both the flavours and techniques of both cultures.

10.2021

WOVEN STORIES FROM IRAN

Lila Valadan’s handmade rugs serve as much more than decorative objects but a reflection of the rich history and culture of Persia. The Hamburg-based entrepreneur is an expert in traditional Persian rugs – as one of the few women in this business. For her collections, Lila Valadan finds inspiration from traditional designs and combines them with contemporary elements. She returns to Iran frequently to accompany the manufacturing process with nomadic tribes.

10.2021

BROADENING THE VIEW: CHEZWEITZ AT HUMBOLDT FORUM

In a small and raw space on the ground floor of Berlin’s brand new Humboldt Forum, a 28-meter-long video panorama depicts various perspectives of the historic setting: Conceived by scenographers chezweitz, it invites visitors and passersby into an atmospheric overlay of the site’s eventful and controversial past – stretching from monastery to City Palace, from parade ground to Palace of the Republic to national construction site. Located between the Schlüterhof and the public passage, the Video Panorama is free of charge and open to passers-by. In addition to this installation, 35 “Flashbacks”, distributed throughout the entire Humboldt Forum, recall important events, unusual uses and everyday moments in the history of the place. With recurring filigree constructions in stainless steel, chezweitz gave these 35 objects a coherent framing.

10.2021

TAKING A CLOSER LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF PORTRAIT

Marlene Dumas, Teeth, 2018 Private Collection, Madrid © Marlene Dumas. Courtesy the Artist and David Zwirner Photo: Kerry McFate

Alice Neel, Harold Cruse, Ca. 1950 Private collection © The Estate of Alice Neel Courtesy The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner

Elizabeth Peyton, Isa Genzken, 1980, 2010 Private Collection © Elizabeth Peyton, Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Selbstbildnis Als Halbakt Mit Bernsteinkette Ii Self-Portrait (Semi-Nude With Amber Necklace Ii), Summer 1906, Kunstmuseum Basel, acquired with a special loan from the Basel government 1939, Photo: Martin P. Bühler

Featuring nine female artists of outstanding significance between 1870 and today, “Close-Up” at the Fondation Beyeler, presents works by Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Lotte Laserstein, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Cindy Sherman and Elizabeth Peyton. Heterogeneous merely in appearance, the artists share a common interest in the representation of individuals and the innovative use of the portrait format to mirror the essence of their time and reflect on their surroundings.