ARTIVISM is an international exhibition concept taking place in Berlin for the first time.
It mainly exhibits digital prints of original artworks, presented like the so-called Exquisite Corpse. Thus, one of the main concerns of SHIM ECO is fulfilled and only a very small CO2 footprint is left behind.
ARTIVISM comprises three exhibitions: Berlin, Bridgeport (New York/USA) and ARTSY and features works by international artists of different generations.
NFTs by the Romanian-French artist Alexandra Mas will be presented for the first time. A selection of the award-winning art films from Artivism “The Dream” (Sorano and Venice, 2022) by Nana Dix, Maria Marshall and Bernard Garo & Marc Décosterd can also be re-watched here.
For the finissage 30 June, the Luxembourg-Russian artist Liza Sterligova-Diederich will engrave live tattoos.
ARTIVISM is sustainable and affordable for all participants. The project is supported by SHIM Art Network, SHIM ECO and the art and style magazine THE EDGE.

*SHIM Art Network is an art exhibition company that fills the gaps in the art world, providing exhibition opportunities to artists, curators, galleries, universities, and other organizations and affiliations with exhibition space for their projects on- and off-line. SHIM Art Network cooperates with the e-commerce platform ARTSY.
*SHIM ECO is an artist group founded in 2021 in the USA and part of the SHIM Art Network. Their central concern is climate change, the environment and social justice.
*ARTIVISM is an expression and result of the SHIM ECO art group.

More information you find here: https://www.mastassini.com/artivism; https://www.artsy.net/partner/shim-art-network https://www.shhhim.com/about

Some artists from the exhibition: Nana Dix, Roz Delacour, Martin Dobbeck, Bernard Garo & Marc Décosterd, Anton Laiko, Sebastian Layral, Mina Lindschau, Maria Marshall, Alexandra Mas, Haralampi G. Oroschakoff, Dodi Reifenberg, Andreas Wolf, Henri Kirsch, Daruuschh.

Drawing installation:

“Mindless obedience is the worst crime”.
Sampsa Indrén, Finland, Henrik Jacob, Germany, Mika Karhu, Finland

German Tatami 01#2023
Die Schattenseite der Sonne
Thomas Whittaker Kidd und Cornelia Renz
Drawings

Artist statement Thomas Whittaker Kidd:

My gesture across the paper is a visual paragraph; an action producing a reaction continuously connected.
This trouble tinted reaction is caressed yielding a transformation just as a Zen tweeker would instigate transcendence.

Thomas Whittaker Kidd is a Los Angeles based artist, poet and performance artist, born in Fall River, Massachusetts, who exhibits paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations internationally. Kidd has exhibited in Los Angeles at ACME., Angles Gallery, Carl Berg Gallery, Richard Heller Gallery, bG Gallery, and 0-0 LA . Kidd’s exhibitions in New York were at The Hole, Shrine, Patrick Parrish Gallery and Lombard Freid Projects. He also exhibited at Western Exhibitions in Chicago, L’INCONNUE, Montreal, Galleri Golsa in Oslo, ARTAe Galerie, Leipzig  and Gnes B. Galerie Boutique, Tokyo.Kidd was curator of the following exhibitions in Los Angeles, The Unruly and the Humorous, at Angles Gallery, Created Worlds and Altered Histories at JK Gallery and Dirty Minds: Life On Earth at BG Gallery. He has lectured on his artwork in Los Angeles at UCLA, Loyola Marymount University, and at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA and San Jose State University, San Jose, CA.  His work was included in To Live and Paint in LA, at the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, CA.

>>> https://www.thomaswhittakerkidd.com

Cornelia Renz develops her work as an artistic reflection on political, social and cultural phenomena, or as she describes it: “(…) art is for me a performative process of cognition”. She examines existing visual material from a wide variety of media and uses it as a template for her reverse glass drawings. In the process, her biography serves as impetus and material. The collage is formative for Renz artistic practice. Since her stay in Israel, she has expanded her original two-dimensional process by combining her drawings, found footage, and wall works into spatial installations. Increasingly, she incorporates the work of other artists into her installations. Curating is part of her artistic practice.

She was a fellow of the Kunstfonds Bonn, the Art Cube Artists’ Studios Jerusalem, the Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral and the Else-Heiliger-Fonds; winner of the Schering Prize for Visual Arts, the Marion Ermer Prize and the Schüngel Prize for Graphic Arts. She has had solo exhibitions at Museum Montanelli, Prague, Kunstverein Konstanz, Kunsthalle Memmingen, Kunsthaus Erfurt, Nolde Stiftung Berlin, Kunsthalle Göppingen, gallery Goff+Rosenthal in NYC and gallery Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, among others. She participated in group shows in galleries and museums in Paris, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Prague, New Orleans, Bregenz, and throughout Germany.

>>> https://www.corneliarenz.info

Art Exhibition by António Lago and Live audiovisual performance by Pratyay Raha and Tiny Domingos

Eröffnung mit LIVE PERFORMANCE

An artistic research project on representation in public space of society in transition

Silke Koch’s artistic works explore, biographically motivated, how society and its utopias are represented in public to private space. She uses various media such as photography, video, sculpture and interventions in public space. All works are based on site-specific research. In the artistic realization Silke Koch creates spaces of possibility to question and expand traditional ideas and perceptions.

For the solo exhibition at Spor Klübü, the artist is showing two groups of works. One series shows images from her unpublished photo archive from 1994/95, depicting an adolescent generation playfully appropriating public spaces and status symbols in the midst of political turmoil and social change, and, as a counterpart, modern architectural facades from the 1980s.

Another series of photographs researches “in the today” in public space for its stock of signs, utopias, and notions of a society that has already blessed the temporal. It examines the promise and expectations with the social change from 1989 onwards of an “even” better world. In the process, ruptures are not left out. The analog camera focuses on spaces – seemingly unnoticed situations far away from large scenes of representation of society.

www.silkekoch.de

Sponsored by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media

Intermediate Objects represents the first culmination of artist Kristina Stallvik’s multidisciplinary, practice-based research on ecosystems of independent publishing. The works in the exhibition are both a documentation of Stallvik’s investigative dialogues and a mediation on the social and material histories of risograph printing. By displaying the physical stencil masters used to print an eponymous research publication, Intermediate Objects animates these traditionally discarded products of duplication. Drafted with tools developed by Full Auto Foundry, the typefaces utilized in the exhibition further explore the collaborative potential of the stencil itself as a creative methodology.

The term “stencil” originates from a string of etymological relatives: “stansel” (ornament), “estinceller” (glisten), “scintilla” (spark). These Old English, French, and Latin terms capture the careful dance between permeability and imperviousness required of the stencil. During the Paleolithic era, the body itself functioned as the first stencil tool. Cave paintings were created by spraying pigments over one’s hand, a technique later replaced by more intricate carving into leaves and plant matter. The risograph machine is heavily informed by this lineage, creating prints by pushing ink through a rice-based paper stencil, a method which was considered ‘inefficient’ and replaced with xerography in the early 2000s. The Riso corporation’s adherence to stencil based printmaking – an intermediary technology between screen printing and digital printing — ultimately created the conditions for its popularity amongst artists and self publishers. The publication, Intermediate Objects, calls on this history to traverse themes in contemporary publishing, from the evolving relationship between an exhibition and its catalog to the surprisingly slippery impermanence of a book object. A small library of previous works from Stallvik’s publishing project, cover crop, will also be available to read in the gallery.

Kristina Stallvik (b. 1999. NYC) is an artist, researcher, and founder of the publishing project, cover crop. Recent exhibitions and presentations include Non Productive Readers: a Performance, Between Bridges, Berlin (2023); Slow Leak, a.p., Berlin (2023); Bubble Bath, Magma Maria, Frankfurt (2023); Act 1, Nylistasafnid, Reykjavik (2023); Dyre Lekeplass, Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim (2022); and A Thing Shared, Automat, Philadelphia (2022). Recent publications include Landing (Lumbung Press, documenta 15, 2023). Stallvik lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Since spring 2023 Kristina has been a Chancellor Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation with Art Laboratory Berlin as the host institution. They have researched the collective structures that comprise independent artist book and zine publishing in Berlin.

I have always tried to express humanity with my work. I have expressed what it meens to be a fragile human being. I hope my art would increase tolerance and understanding between people. Often my work take the shape of a man or woman and sometimes a dog.
I mostly use wood as material.

Joakim Sederholm

Artwork. Sorrow, 2023, 21 x 21 x 83 cm, painted wood

Toolbox Kabinett: Anton Laiko

NFTs from the collection @AWahllos

Pilvi Ojala

My interest is how things are installed. For example, stage design, illusions, artificial and “authentic” are themes that intrigue my mind. In addition to that I am as well interested in museums. Such as art museums, historical museums and biological, scientific, theatre and movie museums, not to forget the museums that show any kind of curiosities.

As a person I am curious. As an Artist I shift from technique and media to another which might seem to be a disability to concentrate. I paint, I draw, I make animation and I build three-dimensional works. Although for me the basic motive as an artis is to collect all kinds of visual material, to edit it and to compose a visual piece of art. I am like a collector who observes, discovers, and digests the world around me.

For me Art is a medium to combine various interests of mine and therefore a way to create a kind of personal Wunderkammer. It is a way to express myself and an attempt to try to place myself in the World and to try to understand it.

Toolbox Kabinett: Jakob Roepke

Antoine Lortie questions the role of the artist and his future in a society of leisure, virtual interactions, surveillance, privatization of the imaginary, the grip of algorithms and polarizations.Anchored in a context where creation in contemporary art is mostly dependent on public funding, he examines the pitfalls that the ideological and normative shackles underlying the regulation of competitions can represent for the blossoming and circulation of new practices, and underlines the need for each new generation of creators to invent its own codes and to demand new contracts.
Nothing could be more natural for this post-digital artist than to be accompanied by the muse Basiops, the princesses Institutiona and Politica and his avatar Agrophobe for this first solo exhibition in Europe. It will be an opportunity to observe how he diverts the driving force of the main diktats within public funding networks: decolonialism, social justice, climate responsibility (among others) to set in motion a whole machinery made up of appropriations of vessels and characters that seem to come out of Japanese cartoons, 3D objets trouvés, recycled environments from video games and virtual realities. A teeming digital arsenal, nourished by an alchemical humus made up of refusal letters and real cases of censorship, which we will not be surprised to find in painting and sculpture. Disciplines whose codes he handles with as much dexterity and predilection as his mouse and keyboard, and which the artist uses to depict hybrid and transmaterial collective daily lives, marked by the growing interpenetration of virtual and physical worlds.
An original approach and a force of proposition, driven by philosophical reflections on cybernetics and posthumanism and a desire for exchange relayed by a series of diagrams, which seek to clear paths towards freedom, lightness and futurity. Tiny Domingos
With Tales from the DxCOLONIZER, ROSALUX returns to its initial vocation as a platform for reflection on contemporary creation. The format of the exhibition will be evolving. Online and offline activities will be developed during the exhibition. Please consult our website and social networks to follow them.

With friendly support of the Québec Government Office in Berlin

Ute Lindner and Patrick Huber.

touché is linked by the proximity in terms of location and content of the operators of both exhibition venues, which have been showing international art side by side for 15 years. The theme of touch is taken up in two ways: On the one hand, through the exchange between each other and, on the other hand, through the technique that connects the exhibits, for they are photograms in the extended sense.

Kronenboden shows Ute Lindner’s long-term exposures of museum walls on which paintings have left their shadows over 30 years. These are combined with Patrick Huber’s shamelessly impudent photograms of lingerie on granny’s damask fabrics using the cyanotype process. The used fabrics, of which one’s own dreams are symbolically made, are humorously reinterpreted here.

COPYRIGHTberlin shows Karen Stuke’s “Handygramme” from the 1990s, in which the light of the displays exposed the photographic paper. They are complemented by works from the lockdown period, the “Italogrammes” from the series Finding Italy in My Kitchen, an attempt to escape the prescribed prison via the kitchen.

ROSALUX, The Berlin-based art space presents
:
PAUL WIERSBINSKI
Werkzeuge und Mythen / Tools and myths
Lecture/performance about several projects around AI:

• “A portrait of the AI as a young Cyber Oracle” – Interactive Installation and Opera 2019
  The work aims to make the creation of an artificial intelligence and its functioning accessible to a broad public. It deals with the reproduction of prejudices in programming, the loss of control in a world monitored by machines and the utopia of consulting an omniscient Big Data oracle. The audience creates texts and music through the programme, to which an opera singer improvises.
• “Home Machine” Interactive Installation 2020
  The emotionally charged concept of “Heimat” is confronted with supposedly purely rational technology. In current German party manifestos, literature and scientific texts, an artificial intelligence is trained to interpret our cultural data on the themes of home and belonging and to tell us what these concepts might actually mean in an uncertain future.
• “Remote Rules and Rituals” Performance 2021.
  How can the rituals of theatre be used to represent the rituality of spiritual machines and make predictions about an uncertain future? The audience was invited to actively participate, to explore the home and to charge everyday objects with new meanings without leaving their own four walls.
• “Dichotomy” Installation 2021
  The installation visualises the connections between pattern recognition and concepts dealing with hopes and fears associated with artificial intelligence.

Paul Wiersbinski. Born in Halle (Saale). Studied at the HfbK Städelschule (Frankfurt am Main). His projects move in the field of tension between art, science and technology, touching on discourses on artificial intelligence, entomology or cybernetics, referencing the history of performance and video art, using a playful and improvised approach. Paul Wiersbinski often builds technical prototypes that are tried out by the public and go through various phases of continuous development.

Exhibitions: “RECORD > AGAIN!”, ZKM Karlsruhe (2009), “The indifference of Wisdom”, NURTUREart New York City (2013), “Risk Society”, MOCA Taipei (2013), “Showcase”, SPACE London (2018), “Offline Browser“, Hong-Gah Museum Taiwan (2018-2019), “Datami”, BOZAR Bruessels (2019-2020) / festivals &screenings: SALT Beyoğlu Istanbul (2012), Luminato Festival Toronto (2014), European Media Arts Festival, Osnabrück (2010, 2014, 2015, 2017), “IN/OUT“ Festival of the National Gallery Amman (2019) and received various prices and grands, such as support from Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.

Image credits: Dichotomy, 2021, Credit: ACC Galerie Weimar / Claus

T r a n s l o c a l i s t

…translocality is not simply a scientific concept of framing a new understanding of place, space, and locality. Translocality is created, lived, and experienced by millions of people in everyday life. Writer Pamela Weintraub reflected on life in a globalized world: living in transition, between cultures, we are discovering who we are: Home may not be within a family or even a single culture, but between cultures and communities and constantly on the move.” (Simon Alexander Peth, What is Translocality?, 2014)

Interrelations between various locations, art and nature this exhibition that gathers melancholic photography, illustrations, collages, assemblages and paintings pulling to an utopic vision and understanding. Utopia can be looked as a final destination. Not as a distant mirage, but as local gathering place, a way station and sanctuary in which to share ideas and experiences. (Hans Ulrich Obrist, My Not -Manifesto for Art, Society, and Mondialite, 2019)

Realization of movement – changing locations – feeling of the immensity. During the deepest inspiration vibrancy, just before capturing an image or a drawing, a painting or an illustration or just cutting collages, I would fully feel my personal migrations and changing moods from malaise to blissful, fulfilled and cathartic state.

I often relate to nature and always bond with it. Call it romanticism, but it is a necessity. Allow me to introduce these hashtags: #darkecology #collapsology #ecopsychology .

It is obvious that the journey of the forever refugee took place after I moved with my family from wartime Bosnia to Croatia when I was 6 years old. Already at that early age in Bosnia, I used to take ballpoint pens and draw flowers and bears on books that were anyway just laying on our home shelf. The therapeutic spirit of art strengthened me a lot even during the time when I felt depressed in high school after seeing the death of my roommate before my eyes.

After finishing MA in History of Art (Zagreb, 2014) I moved to Portugal, then Spain, to finally end up in Germany, where I´ve been living for last 4 years. Immersing myself in fairy tales reminded me of the importance of storytelling, because they represent the core of all relationships. In that imaginary world, I always liked to fantasize and even dream. 

Most of the works from the exhibition were created during period of moving while volunteering or working, and carrying it with me all the time led me to this act. 

Krik krak krout, now this story`s out. Krik krak krun, now this story`s done / such ending of the story is traditional to western Africa.  

Kristijan Jerkovic aka Kirke (b. 1988) will be happy to boast about his volunteering in Spanish village, whose contribution to the illustration for the Kamishibai Theater supported gender equality in a local school. An eco-psychological fairy tale made with illustrations by Sara Gortan, Kontići – The Guardian of the Forest, was published through Interreg project between Slovenia and Croatia to support the Kontija, a protected forest in Croatia, through which an educational cycling path passes to point out protected plants and animals. He is currently working on a comic about antiheroes and low profile people and his third fairy tale to highlight the problem of waste water. But among the most valuable selfless achievements, he would definitely point out that he planted about 50 trees. Good amount of them were planted on Sitio de Pomar on Madeira after the island was hit by a terrible fire in 2016. Let everything he does be for the better future. May he happily turn into dust and return to the Earth what is hers, which is all of us.

Tiia Matikainen

A human figure shrouded in a protective web of plants and soil is at the core of Tiia Matikainen’s latest sculptures. Forms of roots and sand dunes sculpt on clay surface assume the form of strange woodland inhabitants. For the artist these sculptures are guardian figures, a protective layer between human and the surrounding world.

The forest and Finnish mythology related to that are important inspirations for the artistic work of Matikainen. One of the most interesting is the idea of being hidden by the forest. Spirits may lure those moving about there, to become lost in an absurd world and vanish from the view of others.

Being hidden by the forest represents not only fear but also security and connection to nature, for the forest and its flora protect us and all life on our planet.
– To be one with the forest so that finally you feel that you have been lost in its depths.
Tiia Matikainen (b. 1975, Kitee, Finland) is a sculptor and ceramics artist. She completed The Master of Arts degree at University of Art and Design Helsinki in 2002, and presently lives and works in Mänttä.

Further information: http://www.tiiamatikainen.com

Tiia Matikainen

Eine menschliche Figur, die von einem schützenden Netz aus Pflanzen und Erde umhüllt ist, steht im Mittelpunkt der neuesten Skulpturen von Tiia Matikainen. Formen von Wurzeln und Sanddünen, die auf Tonoberflächen gemeißelt sind, nehmen die Gestalt von seltsamen Waldbewohnern an. Für die Künstlerin sind diese Skulpturen Wächterfiguren, eine schützende Schicht zwischen dem Menschen und der umgebenden Welt.

Der Wald und die damit verbundene finnische Mythologie sind wichtige Inspirationen für die künstlerische Arbeit von Matikainen. Eine der interessantesten ist die Vorstellung, vom Wald versteckt zu werden. Geister können diejenigen, die sich dort bewegen, dazu verlocken, sich in einer absurden Welt zu verlieren und aus dem Blickfeld der anderen zu verschwinden.

Das Verstecktsein im Wald steht nicht nur für Angst, sondern auch für Sicherheit und Verbundenheit mit der Natur, denn der Wald und seine Pflanzenwelt schützen uns und alles Leben auf unserem Planeten.
– Eins zu sein mit dem Wald, so dass man schließlich das Gefühl hat, sich in seinen Tiefen verloren zu haben.
Tiia Matikainen (geb. 1975, Kitee, Finnland) ist Bildhauerin und Keramikerin. Sie schloss 2002 den Master of Arts an der Universität für Kunst und Design Helsinki ab und lebt und arbeitet derzeit in Mänttä.

Weitere Informationen: http://www.tiiamatikainen.com

Toolbox Kabinett: Anna-Maria Balov (Berlin)

Kunst Studio 16 has been active since 2020. We are a project space that is mostly used as an exhibition space as well as a studio and darkroom.

The exhibition space opened in October 2021, within an exchange project where the Romanian artist Andrei Ispas was invited.

Araiké Da Silva and Severin Messenbrink are actively working on site, offering workshops in analogue photography and painting/drawing.

Our focus is the district of Wedding, in particular the Soldiner Kiez, which we would like to help shape as a cultural place with artistic exchange for everyone.

Juha Sääski
Joyful light and gloomy shadows

Nadja Schöllhammer
Human Tangle

28.4.-25.5. 2024

Opening on Friday 26.4. 2024, 19-21

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin Wedding
we-sat 3-7 pm
U Bahn Osloerstraße

Mortality is elsewhere, mixed media on paper (watercolour, acrylic, colouring pencil, drawing charcoal on paper), 40 x 60 cm, 2022

Juha Sääski is showing a collection of mixed-media works, which are dealing with lights and shadows of human life. Mixed media in this case means: : acrylic color, watercolor, colouring pencil, drawing charcoal, pencil on paper.

The starting point for this theme was an own experience of the fragile dividing line between life and death. The works are shared in two parts, the larger area is filled with colorful and happy world of life, the smaller area shows black and white and cold shadows of death.
Sääski uses cliche-like, naive , happy and sad contradicting elements and some humoristic tools. In combining tragic-comical and contradicting elements he is striving to describe the paradoxes, the fragility and the beauty of human life.
According to Charlie Chaplin: ”Life is tragic at close up, but comedy from distance”.

Juha Sääski is a finnish artist, born in Helsinki 1952, living and working at west-south of Finland. He has exhibited mostly in Finland but also internationally, in Berlin in several solo shows and in several group exhibitions and in Germany also for instance in Galerie Nord, Nuremberg, Galerie Nord/Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin, Ludwig Museum, Koblenz and Kunstverein & Kunsthaus Viernheim. Sääski has also participated exhibitions in UK, USA, Sweden, Italy and Estonia. More information and CV at homepages: www.juha-saaski.fi and also www.galerietoolbox.com.

Ghosts at work (I)

Nadja Schöllhammer: “Ghosts at work (I)”, 2011/2024, 
Paper, cut-outs, newspaper fragments, hot glue, Indian ink, wood, eggshell and plant parts, 
53 x 72 x 20 cm
photo and © Nadja Schöllhammer

Nadja Schöllhammer – Human Tangle

Nadja Schöllhammer invents methods of expanded drawing. At Toolbox Gallery, she is showing a selection of drawings and paper assemblages. Schöllhammer is interested in the mutability of human consciousness and the connection between individual and collective existence. In her group of works “Human Tangle”, she develops graphic transformations of human body forms. Using pencil, cutter knive, hot glue and Indian ink, she explores the material paper and thus creates a structure in which the individual bodies are integrated into a larger organism.
She describes her approach as follows: “By expanded drawing, I approach a condition that seems impossible in so-called reality: a parallel world in which the (supposed) boundaries between human/animal/plant, male/female, beautiful/ugly disappear. An alternative world to the usual hierarchies of perception and meaning, in which many things are possible at the same time and contradictions are overcome.”
Nadja Schöllhammer, born 1971 in Esslingen am Neckar (Germany), has shown her work in Germany and abroad, e.g. at Kunsthalle Tübingen, Galerie Nord/ Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin, Fengxian Museum, Shanghai, Marta Herford Museum, ARTER Istanbul, Arp Museum Rolandseck, Remagen and many more. She has received numerous grants and awards, including grants by Kunstfonds Bonn, Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral`s grant and art award, the Tokyo residency by Berlin Senate, DAAD travel grants for Colombia and Mexico, a grant by Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart, and many more. Since 2024, she holds a professorship for drawing at Hochschule Hannover. Schöllhammer lives and works in Berlin and Hannover. More information at
www.nadjaschoellhammer.de

Exhibition as part of the workshop series “BESONDERmüll. Art. Ecology. Urbanism”.
The exhibition shows children’s works: Installations, collages, animation, prints and much more, which
explore urban life through artistic means.
The workshop on Saturday invites visitors to develop and contribute their own ideas on dealing with the urban environment.

The group exhibition MATTER OF FLUX brings together three art projects by WhiteFeather Hunter, Lyndsey Walsh and Shu Lea Cheang with Ewen Chardronnet. The exhibited artworks critically reflect about nature, matter and health of female and nonbinary bodies through artistic and scientific research – exploring the use of menstrual serum for tissue culture, proposing new modes of care within the context of female and nonbinary health and discussing both traditional forms and new possibilities of reproduction. In context of the group exhibition, Art Laboratory Berlin will also realise a festival of the same title in June 2023 that seeks to initiate a wider network of and for female and nonbinary artists, scholars and cultural players in art, science and technology.

Art Laboratory Berlin
Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin

Dates and opening hours

Opening: 26 May 2023, 8 pm
Running Time: 27 May – 9 July 2023
Thu – Sun, 2 – 6 pm

MATTER OF FLUX Festival

(in collaboration with FEMeeting)
Panel Discussions, Workshops, Reading Groups and many more activities from and for women/ FLINTA* in art, science and technology
15 – 18 June 2023
More information HERE!

The project The Witch in the Lab Coat (since 2019) by artist and researcher WhiteFeather Hunter is a PhD research-creation and scientific research project (in progress) that explores the intersection of feminist witchcraft and tissue engineering through the development of a body- and performance-based laboratory practice. It is a work in progress until mid-2023, currently conducted at SymbioticA International Centre of Excellence in Biological Art at the University of Western Australia. The Witch in the Lab Coat includes the sub-project, Mooncalf, original research by WhiteFeather, which is a scientific and cultural exploration of the development of menstrual fluid for use in tissue culture, as well as multipotent stem cell isolation from menstrual blood. This research was featured by Merck/ Sigma-Aldrich for International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2021, as part of their #nextgreatimpossible series. WhiteFeather is fortunate to be supported in her research by UWA supervisors Ionat Zurr, Stuart Hodgetts, and Tarsh Bates and the external supervisor François-Joseph Lapointe. Some  related experiments were conducted at Pelling Lab with the support of Andrew Pelling.

Lyndsey Walsh’s project Self-Care explores the personal journey of the artist and reconciliation with their BRCA1 gene mutation diagnosis and the implications of preventative care measures on their sense of body image and notions of self-care. Self-Care is a device that imagines a reality where an individual can take on the caring responsibilities of their cancer, either before they have developed cancer or after it has been removed from their body. Through this device, the narrative of cancer as a bodily enemy is transformed into a narrative about caring systems. The individual/ wearer of the device is given an opportunity to learn about their cancer as an extension of their own self by adopting it with the use of a new technoscientific prosthesis. Self-Care is an artistic attempt to reckon with ruptures in identity caused by the rising use of genetic diagnostics in medicine. Using the artist’s own body, Self-Care weaves a narrative about health, gender, and identity that seeks to resist the confines of the medical gaze. The work features a specially designed chest binder housing living breast cancer cells, which allows the artist to take on the caring responsibilities of their cancer before it emerges in their body. Through this device, the artist explores caring systems and reclaims the potential violence done onto the breasts as liberation through nonbinary gender expression.

Shu Lea Cheang together with Ewen Chardronnet will show the project UNBORN0x9. The art project questions the development of foetuses in artificial wombs outside of the body (ectogenesis) and the cyborg future of parenting. The project explores the role of obstetric science in the increasingly technological experience of human reproduction, speculating on new types of bonding that may emerge with artificial wombs. Here, pregnancy is integrated into a high-tech vision of the body as a biological component of a cybernetic communication system. In collaboration with the echOpen fablab who engages in the development of open source and low cost echo-stethoscope with smartphone application, UNBORN0X9, forks the prototype of a creative tool and hacks the (for humans) inaudible ultrasonic waves in a sonic conversion that allows the interpretation of an audiovisual and ultrasonic emotional score by performers and musicians. UNBORN0x9 is a Future Baby Production, initiated by Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet along numerous collaborators, represents the common group effort to raise issues such as the possible impact of low cost echo-stethoscopy on Global Health issues, questions of access to healthcare and motherhood, ectogenesis and the technicization of reproduction, and the back-and-forth between science-fiction imaginary and science in the making at large.

More information: https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/exhibitions/matter-of-flux/

Art and Science. Encounter by Prof. Dr. Anatoliy Kharkhurin
26.04.2024 from 19:00 Opening
at 20:00 Art Performance Experiment
“The Encounter in Everyday Life“ (feat. Dr. Agniya Pasechnik)
03.05.2024 19:00 Lecture “Paradox of Creative Thinking”

A dialog between art and science. We merge the formal language of science and the metaphorical language of art into a coherent method of creative expression.
Anatoliy Kharkhurin, Ph.D. is a blend of artist, poet, and scientist. As a Professor of Psychology, his academic work delves into the interplay between creativity and multilingualism. His research has been published in monographs, edited volumes, scientific journals, and encyclopedias. But his influence extends beyond academia: he has developed the innovative Plurilingual Intercultural Creative Keys (PICK) educational program designed to enhance multilingual, intercultural, and creative competencies. Anatoliy’s vibrant literary presence is evident in his initiation of the GOROD literary project in New York City and his extensive poetry publications in Russia, Europe, and the USA. His poetic endeavors have evolved after his poetry book “BCE,” merging cognitive psychology with poetic text and various art media. Currently, his experimental work straddles visual art and poetry, with exhibitions in Berlin, Vienna, Dubai, and Moscow.

Agniya Pasechnik is a psychotherapist renowned for her innovative integration of hypnotherapy into clinical practice. With a deep interest in the psychological phenomenon of Encounter, she explores this concept’s applications in everyday life and effectively incorporates empirical research into her therapeutic approach. Dr. Pasechnik is also a co-author of the PICK educational program.

BAS CS Gallery
Soldinerstr. 103, Berlin

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We are celebrating our reopening with the German premiere of the exhibition "In My Mother's Footsteps" by the Israeli-German artist Yishay Garbasz.*

The Prima Center Berlin (PCB) project space in Soldiner Kiez (Berlin-Gesundbrunnen) is celebrating its reopening on April 19 from 7 p.m. with a vernissage by the artist Yishay Garbasz. Her photo series "In My Mother's Footsteps" will be shown for the first time in Germany as part of her exhibition program "3 Facets of Never Again".

The German-Israeli artist Yishay Garbasz impressively documents the stages of her mother's Shoah survival in photographs. The work on the traces and silence that trauma leaves behind in families and society was created in a years-long process of searching for and repeated photography of the places from her memories. Thirteen of these photographs are presented side by side with the words of her mother as a living chronicle - a stony, participatory path and counterpoint to the German Eiertanz around anti-Semitism and the oftentimes shallow German culture of remembrance.

Prima Center Berlin itself is getting a queer makeover for its 20th anniversary with new, old management: artist Annamaria Balov and journalist Paula Balov, daughters of the previous curator and artist Jovan Balov, will continue his work from April, supported by co-curator Jeanne Spada, the friends' association and Kolonie Wedding e. V.. The focus will be on queer and (post-)migrant art from Berlin and Southeast Europe, which questions and discusses gender and national identities, even if no conclusive answer can be found. PCB's position in the cracks between East and West, in Berlin and the Balkans, couldn't be better suited to that work.

About the artist: Yishay Garbasz is an interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin. In her work she explores the inheritance of traumatic memories from war, disaster and marginalization. Her process makes the invisible visible and makes the unsightly tenderly seen. Her work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions, including in Tokyo, Seoul, New York, Miami, Boston, Berlin, Paris, London and at the Busan Biennal.

19.04., 19:00 - Vernissage
12.05., 19:00 - Finissage

Programme "3 Facets of Never Again"

Do What I Say or I Will Kill You Exhibition @PixelGrain, 02.04.-02.05.
Rosenstr. 16, Mo-Fr 12-18:00

The Only Rule of Making Good Art is to Punch Nazis, with Tania Elstermeyer
Exhibition @Spor Klübü, 26.04.-04.05.
Freienwalder Str 31, 27./28.04., 15-19:00
Vernissage 26.04., Finissage 04.05, 19:00

Guided Tour through all exhibitions : 27.04., 15:00 @PixelGrain

9 April – 26 May 2024
Opening: Fri 19 April, 7 pm

Bild und Ton (Image and Sound) is the title of the joint exhibition by Alexander Horn (Mannheim) and Henrik Jacob (Berlin), which will open at Galerie Wolf & Galentz on 19 April 2024. Henrik Jacob’s solo exhibition Blue Balloon was on show at the gallery during the coronavirus crisis in 2019, and Alexander Horn has been involved in several group exhibitions at the gallery.
We would like to invite you to the opening on Friday, 19 April 2024 from 7 pm.

Modelling Clay, Music and AI

Henrik Jacob, who most often creates works in black and white modelling clay, will be showing an interactive installation at Wolf & Galentz consisting of drawings, stickers, clay pictures and clay records. He will use the latter to make the versatile material of modelling clay acoustically tangible and let it resound. The record needle makes its way through a thick layer of modelling clay, changing the material itself and at the same time the sound it produces. Every sound is unique.

A completely new series of modelling clay pictures will be shown whose origin from AI image templates remains clearly visible in the final works. Henrik Jacob has simply adopted the built-in errors of the image generators and integrated them into the pictures. In his plasticine image series Real Estate – House for Sale (2024), for example, detached houses from artificially generated property adverts are offered for sale to viewers with all their shortcomings: those who don’t mind half windows, floating bushes and external staircases leading to nowhere can buy a plasticine property for a low price.

Only the Rocks Remain and The Last One at the Party

Alexander Horn’s paintings are just about the size of a postcard – the edges are not cleanly cut, the panels are not the same size; some are portrait, some landscape formats. Hung in a row, they form a swelling and receding line. Both series, Only the Rocks Remain and The Last One at the Party, show full-length portrait heads, one in dark near-monochrome, the other in nuances between white and black. Strangely attractive and at the same time absent, introverted, the sitters look directly out of the picture or are turned into profile. The small formats force the viewer to look up close, the intensity of the encounter is inescapable. It remains unclear who these people are, but it seems as if they are looking into our innermost being. Beyond words, Alexander Horn tells of the indescribable – of being human and what remains when the party is over.
Kim Behm

Yö ry Artists’ Association is an advocacy organization for professional artists from various fields, primarily operating in Helsinki. YÖ in BERLIN is a group exhibition organized by Yö ry, featuring works by its member artists. Yö has over 300 member artists and a gallery in Helsinki on Lönnrotinkatu. The space is free for all exhibiting artists, not just members of the association. At the core of Yö is its members’ desire to act. Yö ry is not merely an artist-run gallery but a coalition of proactive and enthusiastic professionals from various fields. Yö is a movement and community, whose large membership enables even the most ambitious initiatives to be realized.

YÖ IN BERLIN is the first exhibition exchange between Yö ry and Galerie Toolbox. The exhibition is curated by Toolbox’s founding members together with Yö ry members Mia Makela and Henriikka Pöllänen.

Yö’s exhibition at Galerie Toolbox includes video art, visual art, and a portfolio showcase, where you can browse the works of Yö’s member artists on a screen. The video works and portfolios were selected through an open call.

All the videos have been produced during 2020´s. The video works have been curated into 3 different screening programs. Remnants of the Wild presents videos exploring our partnerships to non-human world from Earth Forces, Mia Makela and Lau Rämö. Tapestry of Time contains video works unraveling the echoes of past in the present time from Johanna Väisänen, Hanna Råst, Joonas Jokiranta and Airbakers (Toivola & Wager).
Close Encounters presents a collection of videos focused on exploring intimacy through performance art from Juhani Koivumäki, Kainulainen&Latva, Mari Hokkanen, Eoin O`Dowd,
To Kosie, Sini Henttu and Ginko Shu.

The paintings and sculptures in the exhibition bring forth the diversity of materials. Isabel Pathirane’s paintings are bound together by the strong use of color and expressiveness. Tuomas Holst blurs the lines between painting and sculpture with works that are made from recycled materials. Krista Blomqvist’s series “Creatures of the Night” consists of paintings on copper, which evolve over time as the copper itself changes. The glass sculptures of Henriikka Pöllänen and Kimmo Reinikka bring out different dimensions of glass as material.

Curatorial team consisted of Toolbox founding members Maija Helasvuo and Niina Räty in collaboration with Yö Association board members Mia Mäkelä and Henriikka Pöllänen.

Opening program includes a performance from Tapani Pirog and an opening talk by Yö curatorial team.. Tapani Pirog will premiere a new performative work entitled Ich bin ein Baseball during the exhibition opening.  Tapani Pirog is a Helsinki-based ultramodernist and post-expressionist. https://www.instagram.com/aetherblau/  www.pirog.fi

More information on the schedule will be available later on Yö’s and Toolbox’s websites.

Residency: 10 May – 7 July 2024

COLLOQUIUM (with Alice Cannavà and Karolina Żyniewicz): 21 May 2024, 7 PM (on-site!)
Free entrance; Registration required:
https://pretix.eu/artlaboratoryberlin/in-progress/4146152/

Public Visits: 31 May and 28 June, 2024, 5 – 9 pm,
and Thursdays and Fridays by appointment:
alice@occultomagazine.com

Occulto’s publisher Alice Cannavà will be in residence at Art Laboratory Berlin from 10 May until 7 July 2024 editing and designing the upcoming issue Occulto 8: Photographic, to be released in July 2024. The temporary editorial studio at Art Laboratory Berlin offers the opportunity to open up and make visible the work behind the birth of a magazine, uncovering its performative potential and the richness of its byproducts and side-effects.

Occulto 8: Photographic focuses on photography from an artistic, historical, technoscientific, and ethical perspective, building on and playing with the transdisciplinary and cross-genre approach developed by Occulto over the years. As usual, the issue will combine richly illustrated essays with visual artists’ projects and experimental sound. Featured contributors include writer and media theorist Valie Djordjevic, filmmaker Laura Lukitsch, the London Alternative Photography Collective, and the artist and photographer Martina della Valle, among others.

The public is invited to visit the temporary editorial office one more time on 28 June 2024 between 5 and 9 p.m., as part of the Kolonie Wedding monthly open-door Friday. On the occasion, Art Laboratory Berlin will host Publishing Matters, a small temporary bookshop with editions by Occulto, Art Laboratory Berlin, and a selection of publishers, artists, and cultural projects from Berlin and beyond. Margherita Pevere, Karolina Żyniewicz and Theresa Schubert, Sina Ribak, Chiara Garbellotto, Selen Solak  and Para Journal are among the confirmed guests, and more will be announced. There will be again a crafty magazine-making station for children and adults, and the in-progress archive on photography will be available for browsing.

Alice Cannavà is an independent cultural worker, designer, and publisher. She studied visual arts in Milan and Vienna and currently attends courses in the history of science and technology at the TU Berlin. As publisher, she co-edits and produces Occulto Magazine – an independent journal that brings together sciences, humanities, and the arts – and, more recently, the Occulto Editions – a diverse and evolving landscape of zines, artist books and special editions. As designer, she’s active in the cultural scene, recent and ongoing collaborations include the art and research platform Art Laboratory Berlin, the feminist experimental music festival Heroines of Sound (Berlin), the center for art and media technology V2_, Lab for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam), and the artist and researcher Martin Howse (Berlin/London). As cultural worker, she curates and performs at cultural events and workshops in Berlin and beyond. Since 2020, she’s part of the extended team of Art Laboratory Berlin as designer/coder for print and digital media. In 2023 she joined the Matter of Flux festival and network. In 2024 she designed and produced the book MATTER OF FLUX. Art, Biopolitics, and Networks with Care, edited by Regine Rapp.

The exhibition ‘ASSASSINS’ by Nina E. Schönefeld shows selected short films from the years 2018-2021 that focus on political activists who stand up for political change, freedom of speech and preservation of nature. The chosen videos are linked to current political and environmental world issues. What unites all activists in Schönefeld’s videos is the extreme will to oppose the omnipresent political paralysis. Schönefeld’s ‘ASSASSINS’ take it to the streets and, if necessary, do not shy away from militancy.
The exhibition includes the video works SNOW FOX (2018), ART IS MY REVENGE (2019), N.O.R.O.C.2.3. (2020) and C.O.N.T.A.M.I.N.A.T.I.O.N. (2021).

Nina E. Schönefeld was born in Berlin. She studied at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Royal College of Art in London. Her works have been shown at Berlinische Galerie, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Haus am Lützowplatz and among other international institutions at Goethe Institute Beijing and Aram Art Museum Korea. In addition to ASSASSINS she will have two more solo shows: RIDE OR DIE at KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art in Berlin and NO FUTURE HOPE at Lothringer 13 (Munich) in cooperation with Münchner Kammerspiele. Nina E. Schönefeld lives and works in Berlin.

„Uff – Wohlbefinden durch aggressive Scheinlösung kognitiver Dissonanz als hegemoniale Leitkultur“
Thomas Behling
01. – 08.06.2024

Eröffnung/Opening: Fr/Fri, 31.05.2024, 19:00

Öffnungszeiten/Opening hours: Sa/Sat, 01.06. + So/Sun, 02.06., 15:00-18:00
03. – 08.06. nach Vereinbarung/by appointment, Tel.: +49-(0)179-8593744

In the course of climate change, we are about to pass several tipping points, triggering chain reactions that will mean unstoppable further warming of the planet for centuries – with severe climatic changes, extreme weather, crop failures, famine and flight on an apocalyptic scale. Yes, really: if we believe the science, we are talking about the loss of human habitat on a continental scale. Everything else is superstition.

The thought of it is very unpleasant, especially if our own behavior contributes to the fact that the disaster can no longer be averted. There are various strategies for dealing with these very unpleasant feelings. One very successful strategy is to fight those who are responsible for our unpleasant feelings, such as scientists or other “climate terrorists”. This can be combined at will with various other strategies, such as various forms of superstition or board head. Many things are very popular, such as the idiocy of trying to play off the economy against environmental protection or putting the freedom of unlimited consumption above human life and elevating it to a non-negotiable achievement of humanity or using symbolic gestures to clear one’s conscience.

We are facing what is probably the most serious cultural crisis in human history: the entire human development of the last 10,000 years is in question. Do we really have to throw it all in the bin and let ourselves be starved back to the Palaeolithic Age – the darkest times of all, mind you, and in this gloom until the end of human existence altogether (in the last comparable climate catastrophes, the planet needed around 10 million years each time to fully recover ecologically). Or can we dare to make a huge transformation at the last second (i.e. now), in which we can save the really beautiful achievements of our culture without it becoming a major disaster?

Whew.

Thomas Behling‘s work deals with the question of how art can still be made in this situation. With his current works, he wants to contribute to a reflection on the situation. In order to understand the extent of the situation, we need a perspective that gives us a greater distance: His objects, often modeled on historical finds, pave the way for insight into the unmasking of appearance, deception and transfiguration. He uses outdated visual aesthetics because they conceal much more of our current world view and thinking than we are aware of and are entitled to. Using supposed remnants of an earlier time, he leads us into the crises and conflict zones of the present, so that what we have already lived through has not been in vain. In his works, he conceals much of what we would like to see and shows how we want to see. In doing so, he also takes great pleasure in making fun of himself.

https://www.thomas-behling.de

Aspects of Armenian painting. From Ivan Aivazovsky to Narine Zolyan.

Opening: Friday, 29 August 2025, from 7 p.m.

Exhibition runs until Sunday, 28 September 2025.

Opening hours: Saturday, 30 August, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday, 31 August from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. and after the Kolonie weekend by appointment.

Since 2008, InteriorDAsein has regularly presented Armenian visual art and now houses a collection of canvases and works on paper by numerous artists of Armenian descent. The exhibition “Aspects of Armenian Painting. From Ivan Aivazovsky to Narine Zolyan” shows works from the period 1860 to the present day from the project space’s collection as well as on loan from Berlin collections. The exhibition invites discussion about the orientations and developments in the painting of a cultural nation that has been fighting for its survival since ancient times and has had to accept expulsion and life in the diaspora once again in recent years.

Iwan Ajwazowski “Schip in a See” around 1860 and Mariam Aslamazyan “Dying Sevan-See”, 1986

On display are paintings and prints by artists who have had a significant influence on Armenian visual art:

Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900), Akob Kodjojan (1883-1959), Gohar Fermanjan (1899-1958),
Mariam Aslamazyan (1907-2006), Mher Abegyan (1909-1994), Tigran Tokmajyan (1923-2004), Petros Malayan (1927-1997), Gayane Khachaturyan (1942-2009) and others

as well as works by contemporary artists:

Seda Bekaryan (1953 -), Narine Zolyan (1957 -), Narek Avetisyan (1969 -) and others

Narek Avetisyan “Landscape”, 1997 and Narine Zolyan “Danger”, 2022

Sergei Parajanov (or Sergei Iossifovich Parajanov according to Wikipedia) was one of the most important film directors of the Soviet Union. Three nations at once: Armenians, Georgians and Ukrainians claim him as their national genius. Born on January 9, 1924 in Tbilisi, Georgia, the filmmaker studied in Kiev, Ukraine, where he also made his first films. His first feature film from 1965, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, was awarded the Golden Medal at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in the very first year of its premiere and received awards in France and England. The film achieved cult status in the Soviet Union. Sergei Parajanov became known not only for his films, which attracted great international attention and probably even influenced Pier Paolo Pasolini, but also as a visual artist and prominent prisoner of Soviet camps. Federico Fellini supported him for years and tried to maintain international attention. Parajanov was greatly revered in Armenia, and his film The Color of Pomegranate (1969) is still considered an icon today. In 1988, an impressive museum dedicated to his life and work was opened in the Armenian capital Yerevan while the filmmaker was still alive.

The exhibition, which will open on Friday, November 29, 2024, at the InteriorDaein, is remarkable as an initiative of Armenian associations that invited compatriots living in Germany to celebrate the birthday of the famous filmmaker with works of art. Anahid Babayan from the Armenische Kulturgemeinde Leipzig e.V. organized the call and arranged the first exhibition in Eduard Panosian’s studio in Leipzig’s city centre. On August 30, 25 artists were represented in the exhibition. The exhibition was then invited to Halle an der Saale and presented to art lovers by Ararat Kultur Halle-Hoffe Saale e.V.. Now the exhibition is coming to InteriorDasein, where numerous exhibitions have been dedicated to Armenian visual art since 2008. We are particularly pleased that we have been able to attract further artists for this exhibition. Both from Berlin and from abroad. On display are paintings, drawings, prints, collages and assemblages, photographs and AI-generated images. The list of artists is long:

Elina Aboyan (Leipzig), Avo Arakelian (Berlin), Maria Arend (Berlin), Sirarpi Asatryan (Berlin), Avag Avagyan (Berlin), Suren Changlyan (Oldenburg), Zorik Davidyan (Chemnitz), Silvina der Meguerditchian (Berlin), Rosanna Eisenmenger-Karapetyan (Berlin), Samvel Gabrielian (Leipzig), Archi Galentz (Berlin), Stepan Gantralyan (Berlin), Sam Grigoryan (Berlin), Mariette Grigoryan (Bremen), Eva Harut (Dresden), Ararat Haydeyan (Saathain), Hasmik Hovsepyan-Haydeyan (Kleinkmehlen), Hratch Kaloustian (Halle Saale), Gagik Kurginian (Berlin), Elina Martirosyan (Berlin), Hakobyan Mkhitar (Siegen), Anahit Mkrtchyan (Oranienburg), Michail Schnittmann (Berlin), Nagash Tarzyan (Hürth), Ani Tiedemann (Oranienburg), Armen Vanetyan (Berlin), VAZO (Vazgen Pahlavuni Tadevosyan)(Die, France) and others.

On Sunday, December 1st from 6 pm we invite you to a musical evening with Roksana Vikaluk, Ukrainian singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist. As part of the group exhibition on the 100th anniversary of Parajanov. Inspired by the masterpiece Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Roksana will perform vocal improvisations of Ukrainian folk songs and share with us some stories from her family’s life in relation to the great master.

The exhibition in InteriorDAsein will remain until January 9, 2025 and is accessible by appointment after opening hours during Kolonie Weekend.

See the report in Armenian Mirror Spectator, Boston, USA:

https://mirrorspectator.com/2024/12/19/armenian-artists-in-germany-unite-around-parajanov-anniversary/

Artists from Wales and Berlin at Toolbox Finnish-German Art Space Berlin

Opening: 28.6.2024, 7pm

Exhibition 30.6.–20.7.2024

Artists:

Wales: Marja Bonada, Katie Cyfenw, Penny Hallas

Berlin: Susanne Ring

Opening hours: Wed–Sat 3–7 pm

„Zuhause Atem Fenster/Home Breath Window/Ev Nefes Pencere“
Özlem Sarıyıldız
29. 06. – 13.07.2024

Opening: Fri, 28.06.2024, 19:00

Opening hours: Sat, 29.06. + Sun, 30.06., 15:00-18:00
01. – 13.07. by appointment, Tel.: +49-(0)179-8593744

“Zuhause Atem Fenster/Home Breath Window/Ev Nefes Pencere” is a solo exhibition by Özlem Sarıyıldız, featuring a multimedia installation with sound and video material. In her work, Sarıyıldız employs the complex soundscape of the night of the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey both as a foundational element and as a metaphor to articulate the country’s expansive socio-political landscape, which profoundly impacted people’s lives in the ensuing years.

Built on extensive archival research of materials from the press and the Internet, the exhibition reproduces the soundscape of that tumultuous night. Sarıyıldız also gathers personal stories and narratives to create an archive of feelings, providing an emotional map of the destructiveness of the attempted coup and the violent reactions that followed. Additionally, the exhibition offers self- reflexive insights into her personal migration story and explores methods of healing from trauma, thereby positioning it as both a personal and political narrative. This invites viewers to engage with the broader implications of socio-political upheavals. The name of the exhibition, borrowed from Etel Adnan, enriches this layered narrative.

Website Özlem Sarıyıldız: https://utopictures.com/

The exhibition is part of Project Space Festival with the opening on June 28th.
https://projectspacefestival.berlin/de

Photo: „Zuhause Atem Fenster/Home Breath Window/Ev Nefes Pencere“, video installation, 2024, Özlem Sarıyıldız

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Interview with Özlem Sarıyıldız by Şehnaz Layıkel Prange – On “Ev Nefes Pencere” / “Home Breath Window” – June 2024

First of all, I would like to share that it is a great pleasure for me to conduct this interview with you dear Özlem. As someone who has been following your concerns around making art and who is especially interested in the psychic aftermath of difficult experiences, I am very happy and curious about this exchange.
Thank you for proposing this interview and giving me the opportunity to reflect on my solo exhibition ‘Home Breath Window’ together.

I would like to start with a question, the answer to which will hopefully give us a better idea about your concern regarding this work of yours. What was the moving motivation for you? And is there something specific you would like to achieve through this work?
This project has lingered in my mind for many years, a project whose direction and form I have intermittently focused on and then set aside. I have long known that I wanted to create a work based on the sounds of the coup attempt night, using that soundscape to reflect on what we experienced that night and the subsequent events. However, finding the form of the work and having the time to revisit it took a while.

In various conversations with my friends about the attempted coup night, I realised that there are many gaps in our memories of that night. Even though we discuss many recent events, we either recall that night in a way that hinders its details or avoid talking about it altogether. There are many reasons for this, which we might discuss later, but as I saw that this state of forgetting and remembering, which I initially assumed was unique to me, is a collective state, I wanted to produce a work that slightly uncovers what remains in our personal memories of that night, thereby partially airing out the memory and making the remembered a part of the collective memory. This work is the result of that desire and, if possible, serves as a naive tool for healing from that night.

As you have already mentioned, you focus on the sounds of the night more than images depicting the incident. Why did you choose sounds primarily?
In recent history, we have experienced many events largely through narratives constructed with images, and that is how we remember them. This does not mean that there are no common images in the collective memory of the coup attempt night; however, in my opinion, the way we experienced and recall that night is predominantly shaped by sounds rather than images: This night had a unique soundscape with distinct characteristics. Therefore, “Home Breath Window” aims to partially recreate the chaotic and traumatic atmosphere through the sounds of the 2016 coup attempt night in Turkey, as we primarily witnessed it through sounds. I believe that this eerie soundscape has an intensity that creates a visceral impact, like a lump in the stomach, serving as a metaphor not only for that night but also for the broader socio-political landscape of the country. The violent sounds of that night can describe the night itself through their physical effects on the body. That is why I chose to focus on sounds rather than images when discussing the coup attempt night in this work.

In terms of visuality, you introduce a totally different video footage, which might at first instance look irrelevant, in addition to making use of existing images regarding the night in the news and it is the moving image of ploughing, i.e. moving snow away in layers. Why this metaphor? What does it represent for you?
These snow ploughing images, taken from live broadcasts of cameras on snow ploughing vehicles in Ankara in February 2021, have no direct connection to the coup attempt night and depict a different season. However, as soon as I saw these images, I felt I could speak about that night through a montage created with these distant images. The image I had been seeking had arrived!

As a metaphor, ploughing also highlights the relationship between social memory and individual memory. Revisiting events that have a room in our memories but have been covered and trying to make sense of them today, returning to that day through the emotions related to that night, and bringing those emotions back to light is part of this effort. In a sense, it is remembering that night by recalling the emotions of that night. This process is part of healing and rebuilding on both an individual and collective level, both while producing the work and while watching it together.

It is obvious that you rather focus on the emotional impact of the night. In the exhibition text, it is written that you would like to create “an archive of feelings”. It reminds us of Ann Cvetkovich ́s work with the same title (“An Archive of Feelings”), through which she introduces an alternative approach to trauma by focusing on feminist and queer experiences. Doing this, one of her main concerns was also depathologizing trauma. Could you please talk
a bit about your understanding of an archive of feelings? Is it a documentation process alternative to existing national narrative that has been created around the coup attempt or is it something more than this for you as in the case of Cvetkovich?
Ann Cvetkovich’s concept of ‘archive of feelings’ has been a cornerstone in my work for the past seven years, including this project. Cvetkovich moves beyond viewing trauma strictly as a medical or psychological disorder by focusing on feminist and queer experiences. This approach highlights that trauma is both an individual and collective experience, emphasising its broader social and cultural dimensions. Cvetkovich argues that trauma reveals how personal experiences are understood within social and cultural contexts. This perspective is vital in my approach and a fundamental principle in the exhibition.

The archive aims to make visible the traces left by that night in our memories through personal stories and narratives. While official narratives are often shaped by political and military perspectives, my archive emphasises the emotional experiences of individuals. This approach aligns with both Cvetkovich’s conceptual framework and my political objectives.

I also would like to talk a bit about the title of the work. “Home Breath Window”. Of course, it has many associations. But I would like to hear it from you. Why, how and at which point did you decide upon this title?
The day I saw the snowplows and fully decided on the form of the work, it had a completely different name. The initial name referred to the inability to access knowledge in the short term, and the resulting unease in both the body and sociopolitical life. However, this name changed over time, paralleling the impact the work had on me. Gradually, I thought the name of the work should function intermittently, referring to ruptures, different openings, and breath intervals. The trio of words that appeared in English translations of the two different texts by Etel Adnan had already been circling in my mind for a long time as a striking image. However, encountering these words in the Turkish translations of the texts as ‘Ev Nefes Pencere’ (Home Breath Window) created a closer and more profound connection for me due to both the sounds of the words in my native language and the impact of hearing them in my mother tongue. This trio could describe both my experience of the coup attempt night in Istanbul and all the decisions and states I went through afterward; it pointed to a constriction and an opening. This name expanded the work and seamlessly attached itself to it.

If we think of the title once again, all the words are directed in a way towards the inside. The first association that comes to my mind is someone sitting at home that night, listening to their own breath in the midst of all the chaos and looking outside through the window to try to understand what is going on. Does this association resonate with what you try to do?
Yes, this analogy reflects one aspect of the work. The name “Home Breath Window” avoids distinguishing between inside and outside, yet sitting at home on that night, trying to understand what was happening amidst the chaos outside, perfectly captures the fundamental emotion at the heart of the work.

Could you please tell us a bit more about the process of the work? How did you decide on the
form and the content? How did you choose and inform your subjects? How did you manage the process? In other words, how did this all evolve for you?
I’ve already mentioned that the project lay dormant for a long time, but I began to find its form when I encountered the snowplows. This work could have been designed as a single-channel video; however, from the start, I had a clear vision of how I wanted the viewer to experience the piece. I knew I didn’t want the viewer to be locked into a single position while watching; instead, I wanted them to move physically between the sounds and images. Just as we lost our sense of direction in the unsettling atmosphere of that night, I wanted the viewer to lose their sense of orientation within the space. Therefore, I decided on a multi-screen design that spreads throughout the space. I established the dominant soundscape, a collage of noises from the internet, television, and streets, as the fundamental sound spread throughout the space. In this way, I created a sound that would kick the stomach of anyone who entered the space.

Apart from this archival research, I asked approximately 50 friends to record audio of their experiences from that night. I persistently choose to speak with my friends for this kind of work. These experiences do not aim to represent the entirety of that night; rather, they are a small effort to name and share the experiences we often discuss or avoid in casual conversations. Some of my friends said they didn’t want to revisit that night, so they didn’t send recordings. However, over 40 people shared their stories. I decided that the way these narratives were listened to had to be different from the sound collage spread throughout the space; to hear an individual voice within that chaos of sound required a deliberate, intentional gesture, not something passively experienced. Therefore, I chose a more intimate listening mode for these individual stories, one that could only be heard up close with headphones. In this way, the viewer would have the experience of listening at different levels with different gestures.

So, you gathered from your subjects what they lived through and what they remember about that night. Although we already know that traumatic memories are usually blurry and have gaps as you have also mentioned, it is remarkable how vivid and detailed most of their memories regarding that night are, perhaps due to the outstanding character of the experience and the processing of them afterwards. What would you like to say about these narratives? Is there anything specific you would like to share with us?
These experiences are very precious to me. Their content provides a compelling reason to rethink. They emphasise erasing the dichotomy between the collective and the individual, highlighting their interconnectedness and constant multi-directional osmosis. Before sharing their recordings, I messaged, called, or met with each friend in person. Many thought their experiences of the attempted coup night were too ordinary to be ‘useful’ for this project. Others felt that their accounts might not be meaningful since they experienced the attempted coup outside of Turkey. Interestingly, there was a proximity in the ways people described their environment and atmosphere when they heard about the coup. They often depicted a clear divide between before and after. They mostly drew a detailed happy, peaceful summer scene, followed by a rupture that struck like a lightning bolt, bringing indefinite and bad news. These discussions and conversations helped us delve into the scope and meaning of the archive of feelings, as defined by Cvetkovich, which focuses on the emotional and psychological experiences of individuals. I am grateful to my friends for sharing their stories with me, as their openness made this work possible.

How did you plan the editing of the video footage and the sound recordings? How did you decide upon the sequence? Is there a specific feeling you would like to transfer through the editing? Another aspect that I noticed in the narratives is that the flow of the night was disrupted due to the coup attempt. In most of the narratives there is a depiction of before and after. Do you think that this disruption had an influence on the editing process of the work?
When planning the editing of this work, I aimed to reflect the fragmented and disrupted nature of the attempted coup night. The night was full of ruptures in both the flow of events and people’s experiences, lacking a linear flow, and its editing and presentation should reflect this. Therefore, I highlighted this fragmentation in the montage. This work attempts to create a montage using multiple monitors rather than one flat surface. While sequencing the audio and images, I considered the chaos, constant interruptions in information flow, and prevailing uncertainty. This was to ensure that the audience could recall or at least sense the same disruption and uncertainty. In individual recordings, people also separated their memories into before and after the events. I highlighted this fragmentation in the overall collage.

The work also has a triggering character due to its intensity. It brings us back to that night in a way with all its unbearable side. At the same time, we know that it is not so often that we talk about what had happened or what we lived through since the incident in such detail. Can we say that your work is in a way an attempt of opening “the black box” or starting a conversation, especially when we think of the nonverbal memory around traumatic events? In other words, is it an attempt of symbolising the nonverbal traces of the event?
Yes, absolutely. The work aims to start a conversation, both verbally and through its relation to nonverbal memories of traumatic events. Verbal conversation is important because words matter. However, the work also draws on nonverbal memories associated with such trauma.

Overall, not discussing the coup attempt for long led me to explore how sound impacts the body. In my view, recognizing nonverbal memory’s importance is essential for creating spaces and methods to express and process these memories, aiding healing and recovery from trauma. Nonetheless, this work also seeks verbal communication to discuss what remains in our memories and from our experiences and to write our histories with our narratives.

In contemporary queer theories on trauma, “rupture” is a frequently used concept together with its potentialities, especially for creating cracks in official narratives. You also mentioned the concepts of “rupture” and “healing” up to now. How do you view “rupture” as an experience in that sense? Do you also think that ruptures have a potentiality and if so can we call this a potentiality for “healing”?
Definitely! “Rupture” is a significant concept used to challenge and create cracks in official narratives, allowing diverse experiences and identities to emerge. This idea disrupts monolithic representations and fosters new spaces for understanding and healing.

In my work, in line with these approaches, I view rupture as a critical tool for engaging with the past and envisioning new futures. Rupture, in this sense, is a crack for me, a way of claiming the world as a whole rather than asking for bits of it. By focusing on the sounds and fragmented memories of the coup attempt night, I aim to create a space for exploring these ruptures and initiating healing, aligning with queer trauma theories that see rupture as a site of potentiality for new forms of solidarity and understanding.

As far as I know, you experienced that night also in Turkey. Is there a resonance between your subjects ́ experiences and yours? Do your subjects perhaps in a way speak also in the name of you? Or put in another way, was formulating a statement of yours a concern for you while editing their experiences or do you situate yourself rather as a mediator?
Yes, I experienced the night of the coup attempt in Istanbul, amidst the very sounds depicted in the sound collage. I can say I resonate with each described individual experience. In this sense, I feel more like both the owner and listener of these experiences, rather than just a mediator. Ownership here is closer to taking responsibility than possession. These are not the exact experiences I had during the coup attempt, but they could have been mine; not the same, but close; not mine, but neighbouring experiences…

As you also know, the context that the work is exhibited always adds another level of meaning. What does the fact that the work is exhibited in Berlin, Wedding in summer of 2024 mean to you? How does this or might influence the work and its impact?
It’s hard to say. The context is established not only by the fact that this work is being done in this city today but more so by the fact that I am in this city today. This work allows me to reflect on the start of my migration to Germany and reconsider a common milestone for the ‘new wave’ of migrants. Creating a piece about that night means returning to the start of my migration journey and temporarily concluding the migration-related works I’ve pursued for the past ten years. In this sense,
this work serves as the epilogue to my oral history-based migration trilogy. An epilogue that reverses the process, constructing the future or the outcomes of the story by insisting on its memory, saying, ‘let’s do and let’s see.’ However, I have to underline, this work is not about migration.

My intention was also to conclude the interview with two related questions. I know that your works mostly have a sociopolitical emphasis. What does it mean to you to do work on the sociopolitical issues of Turkey?
For me, this primarily means continuously establishing and rebuilding a connection with Turkey. However, I do not consider Turkey a self-contained entity; I evaluate it in the context of this work. This represents a position that emerges from the sum of my experiences and places of residence over the years. I am here now, but I am also there. There is no separation between these positions. I feel obligated to address the issues I care about, whether here, there, or in between. The claim is significant, but I always insist that we should not shy away from it: My works constantly question the impact of power on knowledge production and how it shapes social structures, insisting on writing our own history. In doing so, they become tools for establishing political subjectivity and aligning with those who seek to shape history. These works are a means of resistance and solidarity, a method for addressing the burning issues inside me, and a way to bring individual and collective memories closer together—a way of inhabiting the world. Talking about Turkey, in this sense, is part of this framework.

Lastly, I remember that, in one of our conversations, you mentioned that this is your last work on migration. Would you like to share with us why you reached this point and where your journey leads to?
For nearly ten years, I have been producing works utilising various materials and media, focusing on various aspects of migration, both in Turkey and Germany. Throughout this process, I believe I have addressed numerous issues that had accumulated and needed to be expressed. I cannot say exactly how long this process will continue, but for now, it feels like this period is coming to a close. That is why I refer to this work as an epilogue, the end of my migration trilogy. Now, it is time to focus on other things.

Thank you so much for sharing all this generously and I wish an impactful journey to your work.
Thank you! On this occasion, I want to thank Matthias Mayer from Spor Klübü and the workers of the Project Space Festival for hosting ‘Ev Nefes Pencere.’ Also, I thank all my friends once again for sharing their stories with me.

Simo Ripatti (Fi) and Patrick Huber (Berlin) in Toolbox.

Opening: 26. 7. 2024, 7pm, you#re welcome!

Exhibition 28.7.–24.8.2024

Simo Ripatti
Possessed, 2023
Videoinstallation

The work describes observation based on memory and how continuous observation of new things affects the memory image reliability. The starting point is my thoughts on the contingencies of existence and events and how they meet one’s own understanding and thereby form a point of view. Formed through this the point of view also determines how the memory is colored and how long you can consider the memory reliable.
Perception is the basis for connecting to reality, but only comparing to memory, memory and perception questioning and conscious thinking form a reliable experience. In my opinion, it is in many ways the characteristic that defines the experience of this work.

Patrick Huber

Drawings and Objects

Patrick Huber: Füßeln – from the series “Techtelmechtel”wood, wax, approx 100 x 40 cm

Opening hours: Wed–Sat 3–7 pm

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloerstraße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Science Fiction is the Best Friction at ROSALUX, the Berlin based art space is a collaborative exhibition assembling artists from Los Angeles’ Durden and Ray gallery, Nixxxon from Mexico City, and artists from Berlin. This experimental exhibition features imagery and scenarios of unforecasted inventions and artworks as a gestural attempt to engage with and affect the trajectory of affirmative future possibilities; toward not completely understood results.
Science Fiction is the Best Friction may be an amorous abrasive friction between the artists, objects and ideas for the experience of this event.

Part of the B-LA-M art exchange taking place in Berlin from Jun 27th through Jul 14th, 2024.

Thematically central to Oona Hyland’s work is the forgotten and repressed, that which is hushed up, people who have been silenced. She is particularly interested in exploring artistic means that do not just depict the processual nature of forgetting and remembering, but rather bring it to life, lets us experience it.

Based on her preferred artistic media – printmaking, mokuhanga ( Japanese woodcut printing), cyanotype– the artist creates installative, kinetic works with drawing, sculpture and video, with which she attempts to make traumatisation representable and tangible through movement and narrative. She contrasts static and stillness – silence – with the dialogue that takes place in time and between people.

In her work Active Forgetting, for which the exhibition is named, she concerns herself with the institutional abuse in Irish mother and baby homes and the associated so-called Magdalene Laundries, where unmarried pregnant women were interned and coerced into perform forced labour (from the late 19th century until the 1990s). Many of the women and their children died in the homes, often from malnutrition. This has only been publicly addressed in Ireland since the 2010s. Oona Hyland’s own mother gave birth to her eldest brother in one such home, the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Ireland, which was not talked about in her family for a long time.

CV

Oona Hyland studied Cinematography at Ballyfermot College of Further Education (BCFE) Dublin, Irish Art History at Trinity College Dublin (TCD, MPhil 2017) and Art Research and Collaboration at the Institute of Art Design + Technology Dublin (IADT, MA 2022). She has participated in numerous residencies in recent years, including Fundació Joan Miró, Agalab Amsterdam, BKN Sweden and Edition Basel. In 2021 she was shortlisted for the On Paper Print Award in Barcelona. In 2022 she received the DLR Emerging Artist Award in Dublin. In 2021 she was elected to the Royal Society of Painters/Printmakers in London. She is a member of Graphic Studio Dublin and 9 Dragonheads. Oona Hyland lives and works in Dublin.

The exhibition is supported by

Roberto Aarnio’s creative journey led to a new way of creating for him by exploring mundane materials like sandpaper and various adhesive tapes. While adhesive tape was not in any way new to him, it became an intriguing medium due to its challenging properties. Achieving a novel use required a sense of discipline. Different thoughts emerged during the creation of these works; some reflect personal journeys, while others are open to interpretation.

Brigitte Wilhelm – Works in Plexiglas

Opening Saturday 20 July 6 pm

The artist Brigitte Wilhelm (*1939) will be present.

Music: Margarete Huber voice & Tomas Bächli piano

constanza carvajal – cantos blandos

Opening: Fri 23.02.2024, 7pm

Exhibition: 25.2-23.3.2024
Open on Kolonie Weekend, Sun 25.02. 24, 2–6pm

Toolbox Cabunett: Hildegard Skowasch

Iris Germanica, a plain flower seen all over Europe
Iris Germanica is Goddess of Everything
Iris Germanica is my sad song of time passing by

I think my painting as a living organism. In the beginning there is a seed of idea, something that bothers me and wants to see the light. First painting is a sprout, second is a leaf, third is maybe a flower and ten paintings makes a body.
I’d say: I paint for pleasure, pleasure of the recognition: that’s what it’s meant to be!
I’d hope: there are seeds of all seen sprinkled on you!

In my painting I’m guided by association and desire. I want to paint something that I yet never saw, but still when seeing it feels obvious. This feeling of recognition is what declares painting ready.

I moved to Berlin ten years ago, and while painting these paintings I also relived that time, time that made life permanently dichotomous, it goes on two tracks.

Iris Germanica is fragmented saga about time, loss, immigration, nation, myth, botanic, cities and evolution. Some parts were lost, some altered, its old but not original. It’s sincere but not true.

I am a visual artist based in Helsinki and Berlin. I did my MFA degree in 2011 in University of Fine Arts in Helsinki, where I’m also doing my PhD about meanings of colours an seeing. My works were shown in several soloshows and group exhibitions in Finland, Denmark and Germany like Helsinki Kunsthalle, Forum Box Gallery and Kunst am Spreeknie/Transformart festival.

Siiri Haarla
Helsinki 23.1.2024

artwork: Iris Germanica ‘Nibelungen’ oil painting on canvas, 140x100cm, 2023 (detail)

Hildegard Skowasch

*born in Essen. Lives and works in Berlin.

Studied at the Kunstakademie Münster and at the Ecole supérieure des Arts Plastiques, Tourcoing (France).

Hildegard Skowasch’s work focuses on sculpture (paper/ceramics), drawing and printmaking. Starting from form, she uses different materials to create projection surfaces and a world of her own with shifts in content, possibilities and perspectives on being.

She is the initiator of artistic collaborations such as the “Hildegard Project” and “Generator”.

Since 1989, she has held numerous residencies, including at Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, USA, the Saari residence of the Kone Foundation, Finland and the KKVV Luleå, Sweden.

She exhibits internationally.

In 2019, she was represented with a comprehensive exhibition at the Polish National Museum in Gdansk and in 2022 with another major solo exhibition at the BWA Municipal Gallery in Olsztyn.

She is showing ceramic wall works in the Toolbox Gallery cabinet.

Hildegard Skowasch: untitled, 2019, Ceramics glazed, ca 20 x 20 x 20 cm

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloerstraße

Wed, Fri-Sat 15-19, Thu 16-20
An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Finnish painter Roberto Aarnio inquires into oneself with his mental landscapes that are meant to question emotions and one’s own space among others. Juxtaposed against his mental landscapes are representations of concepts, conjectures and playful exaggerations. These incomplete or inefficiently organised pieces come together in a composition called “Fragments”.

“Fragments” delves into the essence of human existence by waving through our emotions and perceptions with vivid mirroring pieces. The exploration of introspection and the dynamic interplay between conjectures and exaggerations are the focal points of his works.

The complexity of every-day life intertwined with nature, as well as our milieu of existence provide the stage for Aarnio’s work. He compares the routine life and its emotional journey while viewing these fragments as a whole.

An archipelago is a group of islands that lie at a short distance from each other and are united into a common system. 

This is the metaphor used by Ukrainian artist Aglaya Nogina to describe the essence of the connection between her and her close friends. In the last 2 years, the war, like tectonic movements, has divided them into different parts of the world, but their inner unity has remained unshakable. The series of large-format portraits reflects on femininity, female strength, inner and outer beauty, and the powerful force of friendship.

Aglaya works with her author’s texts and the xerolithography printing technique. 

This project involves participation: 

The photo references embodied in the finished works were created directly by the models themselves. The image of their “island” emerged through a sincere dialogue about the nature of the depicted.

CLASH! Otamatone, Cello, Toy Piano & Vocals

New music & world premieres

by and with Manuel Fischer-Dieskau (cello, otamatone), Fidan Aghayeva-Edler (toy piano), Margarete Huber (soprano)

Two toy instruments meet cello and voice

With music by John Cage, premieres by Fischer-Dieskau and Huber, trio improvisations, and early music (Händel, Bach)

This will be accompanied by projections by Ute Lindner & Patrick Huber

Thursday 19 October 8 pm – Free admission

Venue: COPYRIGHTberlin, Schwedenstraße 16, 13357 Berlin

Info: www.copyrightberlin.de

The concert is Part 1 of Clash & Motion – Two concerts with New Music for unusual and ordinary instruments, voices and objects

(Part 2 on 28.10. MOTION: “Ensemble Cooperativa” plays New Music by Morton Feldman, Willem Schulz, Angelika Höger, and Margarete Huber for cello, violin, voice, piano, sewing machine, kinetic objects, electronics, and tape. // Ensemble Cooperativa: Edith Murasova, mezzo-soprano / Christina Gürtler, voice / Djamilija Keberlinskaja, piano / Willem Schulz, cello / Susanne Schulz, violin, kinetic objects / Peter Schwieger, synthesizer, sewing machine, objects / Katharina König, accordion, laptop. // Accompanied by a projection by Karen Stuke. Venue: Kronenboden, Schwedenstraße 16, 13357 Berlin)

MOTION:

Ensemble Cooperativa

plays Contemporary Music by Morton Feldman, Willem Schulz, Angelika Höger, and Margarete Huber

and improvisations open to the public

for cello, violin, voice, accordion, piano, sewing machine, kinetic objects, synthesizer, and tape

Ensemble Cooperativa:

Edith Murasova mezzo-soprano / Christina Gürtler voice / Djamilija Keberlinskaja piano / Willem Schulz cello / Susanne Schulz violin, kinetic objects / Peter Schwieger synthesizer, sewing machine, objects / Katharina König accordion, laptop.

This will be accompanied by a projection by Karen Stuke.

Saturday 28 October 8 pm – Free admission

Venue: Kronenboden, Schwedenstraße 16 13357 Berlin

The concert is part 2 of “Clash & Motion” – Two concerts with New Music for unusual and ordinary instruments, vocals and objects.

(Part 1 is on 19.10. “CLASH! Otamatone, Cello, Toy piano & Vocals”: New music & world premieres by and with Manuel Fischer-Dieskau (cello, Otamatone), Fidan Aghayeva-Edler (toy piano), Margarete Huber (soprano). Two toy instruments meet cello and voice. With music by John Cage, premieres by Fischer-Dieskau and Huber, trio improvisations, and early music (Händel, Bach). This will be accompanied by projections by Ute Lindner & Patrick Huber. Thursday 19 October 8 pm – Free admission. Venue: COPYRIGHTberlin, Schwedenstraße 16, 13357 Berlin)

This year’s works are all about “social” media. How they bring us together, but also divide
us. What influence do they have on our society? Which media is actually social?
The first part #Gesellschaft is about exposing the bandwidth of our totality and visualising
a personal ideal, depicted in three paintings.
(Acrylic on aluminium/glass)
With the second series #Soziales Medium, the artist Radio Thomas explores the questions
experimentally: Can art be social? Can the value of a painting be separated from its
price?
6 paintings, 6 prices, 1 experiment and 1 goal. Community.
The aim is to create a common value that is much higher than the individual value of a
painting. Allegorically, the materiality of the 6 paintings (acrylic on concrete and poplar
wood) stands for our living space.

PLENTY OF SPACE TO THINK –
tot chuvak artist&illustrator

Vita

I am Alex Zhalibo, an artist, designer, and animator with a keen interest in the intersection of aesthetics, culture, and humor.

I was born in 1992 in Minsk. As an art teacher with expertise in drawing, design, and animation, I am always working hard, improving my ability to infuse my work with creativity and innovation that is both intellectually and emotionally stimulating.

Artworks of mine have been widely recognized, and I am fortunate to have pieces in private collections across various countries, including America, France, and the Netherlands. Notably, one of my canvases was purchased by the family of Marlene Dietrich, a tribute to my commitment to excellence.

Currently based in Berlin, I have been honored to showcase my work in few exhibitions and participate in the prestigious Berlin Photo Week 2022. I have also had the privilege of exhibiting my work at Rotes Rathaus, where my unique perspectives on humor and everyday life have been widely appreciated.

My art is a fusion of different forms, including drawings, paintings, sculptures, and animations. Whether through new exhibitions, residencies, or collaborations with like-minded individuals, I am committed to continuing my artistic journey and contributing to the rich tapestry of human creativity.

Ulu Braun Videoscreening/Talk
Fr., 10.11.2023, 19:30

The three video works shown („Die Flutung von Viktoria“ 2004, „Architektura“ 2015, „Burkina Brandenburg Komplex“ 2018) represent Ulu Braun’s broad spectrum. They explore the intersections between painterly-performative video art and hybrid auteur film and illuminate the influences of social, economic and media globalization on our civilization in a poetic- ironic way.

Ulu Braun (1976 ) lives and works in Berlin and Lieksa (Fi). He studied painting and film at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Art Academy Helsinki and Film University Babelsberg. His work has been shown regularly in art institutions and at film and media festivals since 2004.

More info: www.ulubraun.com

Die Flutung von Viktoria (22 min, 2004)

A group of tourists travels by bus for the last time through the dreamlike world landscape, where ancient ruins and futuristic greenhouses testify to the faith in progress of human culture. The utopian place of Victoria becomes the setting for a surreal drama in which archaic motifs and modern life worlds collide. This contrast is also evident in the protagonists: while the urbane tour guide Henkel plans a diving expedition into future underwater worlds, the traveler in the yellow suit longs for the water as a return to the origins. The realization with miniatures removes the oppressive scenario into a playful, fairy- tale atmosphere, which is carried by the expressive faces and the real moving figures. (Videonale 10)

Architektura (15 min, 2015)

Rather than reinventing the wheel, Ulu Braun re-envisions the structural potentiality of the brick, in this revisionist fable of mankind’s urbanization of our planet. Employing playful and visually dense digital collages, Braun’s associative tableaux collate an ‘alternate’ vision of our world, where nature invades the urban (and vice-versa). We’re transported by a comforting narrator through post-apocalyptic, post-capitalist habitats, where the material co-exists with the metaphysical, the literal alongside the figurative (soap-bubble buildings stand alongside ruined churches turned car dealerships). Architektura echoes our civilization’s childlike ingenuity in creation and destruction, as we question the inheritance we pass on to our future generations. (Andrei Tănăsescu, Bucharest)

Burkina Brandenburg Komplex (19 min, 2018)

A presumably African village, inhabited by Germans. The film Burkina Brandenburg Komplex describes a geographical construction that makes use of ‘our’ medial and collective image of Africa and puts it to the test through inaccuracies. An archaeological find is made in a mine: a Ferrari. We tag along with Joachim on his everyday rounds. He has his heart set on realising a common energy project. The Museum of Prussian Cultural Heritage is run by a black woman. She presents artefacts from Western consumer culture with a special emphasis on German products. Joachim is involved in the ritualistic production of energy in the village, but gets excluded when the ceremony is nearing its finale, finally catapulting himself out of the ‘story/history’. (68.Berlinale, 2018)

“ZERO TOLERANCE”
One Night Group Show

Fri., 24.11.2023, 19:00

Artists:
Boris Abel, Michelle Alperin, Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka V Stylianidou, Volker Andresen, claudia balster & hannah goldstein, Robert Barta, Norbert Bauer, Matthias Beckmann, Thomas Behling, Antje Blumenstein, Sascha Boldt, Gunnar Borbe, Ulrike Buck, Johannes Bünemann, Kai Bornhöft, Astrid Busch, Ulu Braun, Daniela Lehmann Carrasco, COUNCIL OF MANY (Alexine Chanel + Mickaël Faure), Rolf Czulius, Lea D’Albronn Allexandre, Henrike Daum, Annedore Dietze, Mirjam Dorsch, Stefan Draschan, Stefan Ebner, Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, Knut Eckstein, Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout, Tania Elstermeyer, Roland Fuhrmann, Roman Frechen, Anne Gathmann, Ingo Gerken, Robert Gfader, Monika Goetz, Karø Goldt, Massoud Graf-Hachempour, Harriet Groß, Berenice Güttler, Stephanie Hanna, Theemetra Harizani aka Dimitra Charizan, Andrea Hartinger, Michael Hauffen, Andreas Helfer, Christian Hellmich, Thomas Henriksson, Birgit Hölmer, Stephan Homann, Esther Horn, Fabian Hub, Henrik Jacob, Hubi W. Jäger, Thomas Jocher, Uwe Jonas, Silke Koch, Sebastian Körbs, Karen Koltermann, Erika Krause, Käthe Kruse, Philipp Lachenmann, Simone Lanzenstiel, Anett Lau, Niina Lehtonen Braun, Sabine Linse, Catherine Lorent, Antonia Low, Mahony, Nadja Verena Marcin, Matthias Mayer, Ulrike Mohr, Thomas Monses, Matthias Moravek, Peter Müller, Paula Muhr, Leo de Munk, Berit Myrebøe, Joe Neave, Rainer Neumeier, Lorcan O’Byrne, Jennifer Oellerich, Jürgen Olbrich, Lydia Paasche, Manfred Peckl, Wolfgang Plöger, Luisa Puschendorf, Kathrin Rabenort, Nika Radic, Benjamin Renter, Regine Rode, Römer + Römer, Maja Rohwetter, Julia Rüther, Özlem Sarıyıldız, Michel Santos, Sabrina Schieke, Adrian Schiesser, Marco Schmitt, Iris Schomaker, Richard Schütz, Michael Schultze, Veronika Schumacher, Olivia W. Seiling, Heiko Sievers, Heidi Sill, Johanna Smiatek, Erik Smith, Elisabeth Sonneck, Petra Spielhagen, Hans-Peter Stark, Gabriele Stellbaum, Ralf Tekaat, Anja Teske, Thea Timm, Miriam Tölke, Kata Unger, Sencer Vardarman, Gabriela Volanti, Yvonne Wahl, Klaus Walter, Line Wasner, Anja Weber, Marcel Friedrich Weber, Linda Weiss, Bettina Weiß, Julia Werhahn, Anke Westermann, Markus Willeke, Ila Wingen, Markus Wirthmann, Norbert Witzgall, Ina Wudtke, Sibylle Zeh, Rosa Zettl, Ella Ziegler, Michaela Zimmer

Since 2005, quotes from past decades (mostly from the 1980s) headlined the annual One Night Group Shows at the end of November at Spor Klübü. Other projects and especially the pandemic had led to a 4-year break of this show format. This year the thread is picked up again. “ZERO TOLERANCE” stands as a term for many dubious strategies – especially as a strategy of crime fighting and crime prevention. This allows the police – preventively, so to speak – to intervene or crack down hard on regulatory violations below the crime threshold, so-called petty offenses. It became known in the 1990s with the “New York Model”, championed by Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his police chief Bill Bratton, who based it on the “Broken Windows Theory” that had already emerged in the 1980s. As a result, the zero-tolerance strategy became a worldwide export hit and also partly ended up in German criminology and politics. The success and efficiency of the strategy remained doubtful and were apparently never clearly proven. The negative sides, however, were obvious: exaggerated restrictions on freedom, the emergence of excessive police arbitrariness and violence, the establishment of a control and police state, and so on. In the 1990s, running a red light on a bicycle in Manhattan or openly consuming alcohol on the street meant fearing that one could end up in jail. Another zero-tolerance strategy was pursued by the U.S. government under President Trump many years later with regard to immigration to the United States. If legal or illegal immigrants as well as asylum seekers had, among other things, an entry in their national or foreign criminal records, they were immediately detained and deported or turned away. Families, e.g. children from their parents, were also separated from each other without consideration.

What if you turn zero tolerance around and look at it from a different angle? For example, precisely against these political intentions and actors and in the political demarcation against the right. It is unacceptable that a party like the AfD, for example, is tolerated in Germany just because it reaches people and wins votes, but is based on far-right, National Socialist, racist, anti-Semitic and queer-hostile ideas, among other things. Anyone who abandons his zero tolerance limit at this point, who enters his firewall, succumbs to complicity and makes right-wing extremism more acceptable.

The exhibition is the result of a creative process,
in which the young participants transformed recycled materials into a wide variety of artworks. The works reflect their imagination, their commitment and their view of issues such as sustainability, ecology and urbanism.

On Saturday, 28 October 2023, from 13:00 to 16:00 h,
we will offer a workshop on masks. Here, visitors will have the opportunity to discover their own artistic potential and experiment with face masks made from recycled materials.

Alexandra Goloborodko and Aleksandra Yurieva-Civjane

Kulturschafft e.V. & Butterbrot Education

Supported by PWC Foundation
Project executing organisation: Kulturschafft e.V.
Organised by Kulturschafft e.V. and Butterbrot Education.

In partnership with: KiezTreff Jüli 30 and Projektraum n

OKK invites you to the second round of artistic mushroom research.This year MYKOLOGICA II – open ateliers.Photography, real mushrooms, taxonomy, drawing, experimental lab.the event runs within the framework of Kolonie Wedding / October 23.

‘Cinco Retratos’ [Five Portraits] is a twenty-two minute black and white looping installation made by Gabriela Alcofra and Billy Cowie, completed in 2023. It investigates the possibility of shared territory between fine art portraiture, early film and dance.

This presentation at Kronenboden will be the world premiere of the complete work.

standing there / standing on your head / standing close / standing up / standing next to / resisting / misunderstanding / standing straight / standing upright / standing crooked / standing, standing, standing

an exhibition by Maïa Kleinknecht

Vernissage on Friday 29.03.2024 at 6pm

Open on the colony weekend: Sat 30 – Sun 31 from 11am – 6pm

Running Time: 11 November – 4 February 2024
Thu – Sun, 2 – 6 pm
On 26 January 2024 open until 9 pm

Art Laboratory Berlin is glad to announce the solo show of bio media artist Saša Spačal with the newly produced artwork TERRA XENOBIOTICA (2023) based on her current artistic research.

Humans have an ambiguous relationship to the ground, often identifying and personifying with the soil of their ‘homeland’, and depending on its fertility to survive – and yet, all too often, treating it as mere dirt. This neglect is more extreme in technological zones, not only in industrial areas, but in spaces of communication and transportation. In her new art project TERRA XENOBIOTICA Saša Spačal explores soil life at airports. “Toxins are seeping into the ground, creating unfamiliar lands that call for different kinds of stewards – the ones who navigate and nurture, rather than gatekeep or extract” states Spačal. “As humanity remains locked in an ongoing cycle, a holding pattern of take-offs and landings, the notion of a final landing lurks in an unimaginable distant future.”

The installation Eternity Scanner, based on a residency at the Rillig Lab for Plant Ecologies at Freie Universität Berlin, invites the public to explore how pollutants, especially Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) such as Teflon, so called ‘forever chemicals,’ permeate the soils of airports. Essential in the art piece are 85 soil chromatograms developed from earth gradually polluted by increasing amounts of PFAS, making up Gradients of Eternity, a database created as first of many to train an AI neural network to recognise PFAS pollution on soil chromatograms, and metaphorically symbolising the 85 years since PFAS were first accidentally discovered. Visitors are encouraged to choose a soil chromatogram and place it on the Eternity Scanner, which acts as a contemporary oracle. “The directive is clear and compelling; our only requisite action is to attune ourselves to the scanner’s perpetual soundscapes” remarks the artist. Powered by AI, the scanner reads the chromatogram, producing a sonification of the information it contains, acting as a clarion call for a new generation to come forward and regard the land not as dominion, but as kin.

The film Holding Patterns, written by Saša Spačal and cultural theorist Alison Sperling, creates a dystopian near future scenario where airports still exist but without function, exploring the matter of ground and soil pollution. Essential for Spačal is the “question of grounding, of being grounded, and of groundedness in the unique space of Berlin’s iconic defunct airport at Tempelhof Field”. The film examines the complex and varied epistemologies involved in modern concepts of travel and identity, proposing a new model of responsibility, care, and stewardship.

Art Laboratory Berlin has collaborated many times with Saša Spačal: The artist was present with several works at the exhibitions The Other Selves. On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome (2016), Nonhuman Networks (2017), presented her artistic research at the international conference Nohuman Agents (2017) and had several artist residencies in 2019 and 2022 at Art Laboratory Berlin and the Rillig Lab | Ecology of Plants, Institut für Biologie, Freie Universität Berlin, which lead to the new project TERRA XENOBIOTICA.

Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz

TERRA XENOBIOTICA | CREDITS

Scientific consulting: India Mansour
Storytelling: Alison Sperling
Film montage: Maja Andlovic
Installation: Dmitry Morozov
Assistance: Flore Wormskamp

Timo Nentwig would like to sensitize today’s throwaway society not only through the understanding
of material and technology, but also to make them break out of the virtual world. As his
previous works have already shown, he hereby shows us the emergence of a harmonious
interplay between "inside and outside" (Gallery 61 and Artists).
"Everybody needs space which he himself can fill" is the principle for artistic creation.
For a closer understanding:

Timo wants to clarify to society that not everything we consider "garbage" is actually
garbage and must be thrown away. From every seeming "useless” small or large thing can
be integrated into our lives in a new way, making it useful or valuable again for our society
or for our environment.

With his work he opposes the trend of today’s consumer society and shows that not
always new materials are needed to create "small miracles".

T.N. wants to show us the way back to craftsmanship and interpersonal relationships, take
us out of the virtual world of our modern technology and out of anonymity. T.N. wants to
show us the way back to the craft and interpersonal relationships, show the way out of the
virtual world of our modern technology and out of anonymity.
Create something together. Working hand in hand with each other again and rediscovering
the love of craftsmanship together. From something "old" create something "new and
incorporate the awareness of our fellow man and our environment", that is the message
that Timo embodies with his work.

Concert:  26.01.2024, 8 pm

“SPLASH LEMON”

Andreas Günther Keys

Janco Bystron Drums

23 March 2024, 5:30 – 9 pm
Free entry, no registration

The book can be purchased at the event (25 EUR).

The year 2024 could be decisive. Another state could disappear from the world map. Completely or within the borders we know. After several years of the nightmare unfolding around us and the tragedy lurking within, this possibility no longer seems unimaginable. Last year, we Armenians lost an important part of our homeland – Artsakh. An independent democratic state, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia is in danger. Ukraine is in danger. Who is next? We are artists, and we have no ready-made recipes on how to bring back peace and stability, prosperity and confidence in the future. But we do have a refuge – our love of and belief in painting as a world of its own. In this exhibition, we want to reflect on the limits of this world.

We got to know each other at a vernissage at Galerie Taube in 2019. Gagik had been to Berlin several times before and was invited to take part in the December Salon. As it turned out – in the last catalogue of Galerie Taube. The next year, the Covid pandemic closed the borders and artistic exchange slowed down drastically. In February 2022, bombs fell on Ukraine and Gagik decided to leave his new home, studio, library and artworks to save his family. (The war began suddenly and insidiously. Modern missiles can reach any point in the country, no one is safe). The picturesque town of Uzhgorod, where Gagik lived with his young wife and daughter, lies on the border with Slovakia. I offered to come by car and pick up my colleague at the border. Many countries from Switzerland to Canada invited the Ukrainians, but Gagik was already familiar with Berlin and settled in the German capital with his family. In the Berlin district of Pankow, we ran a gallery together with the artist Andreas Wolf and Wolf&Galentz could not help but reflect on the situation after the outbreak of military aggression. In June 2022, we offered the public a group exhibition Commentaries on Betrayal and Violence. Gagik was the painter at the centre (focus) of this project. At the same time, we could not expect the 69-year-old artist to be able to immediately produce new works for the exhibition. After his arrival in Berlin, Gagik had to go through a long process of finding accommodation for his family, a school for his daughter and sorting out paperwork. However, Gagik brought his experience and vision of art to Germany and masterfully commented on the works of numerous artists of different generations and from different countries in our group exhibition. Gagik continues to actively participate in artistic life in Berlin, his works are light and virtuosic, lively and fascinating. I would also like to allow myself this freedom of expression. 30 years of living in Berlin have disciplined and somewhat constricted me. In this exhibition, I would like to allow myself to be a painter who comments. In addition to Gagik’s paintings, I am presenting a series of objects. Some are found, others are placed in the context of the frame, but all are not created with brush and paint. In addition, we – both Armenian artists – have created a joint print for this exhibition Vereinte Gegenüberstellung: Back to back, I – a Russian citizen and Gagik – a Ukrainian citizen try to demarcate a small free space for us. Thanks to Berlin, where artists find refuge and to Andreas Wolf and Toolbox where Gagik Kurginian and I are allowed to exhibit together.

Archi Galentz, born 1971 in Moscow (Russia as part of the USSR), 1989 studied at the State University of Fine Arts and Theatre in Yerevan, Armenia (part of the USSR), 1992–97 studied art at the Berlin University of the Arts, master student of Klaus Fußmann. Since 1989 over eighty international exhibitions, since 2000 working as an exhibition curator, journalist and lecturer. Founding member of a platform for Armenian diaspora artists ‘Underconstruction.Home’. 2008 founding of his own project space InteriorDAsein in Berlin. 2019 founding, together with Andreas Wolf, of the gallery Wolf & Galentz Galerie in Berlin Pankow. Father of two children. Archi Galentz lives and works in Berlin.

Gagik Kurginian, born 1953 in Yerevan, Armenia (part of the USSR). 1966 resettlement with parents to Zaporizhia, Ukraine (part of the USSR). 1977 graduated from the State Medical University. In addition to being a doctor, he worked as a jeweller, sportsman and artist. Since 1989 participation in numerous international exhibitions. 2015(?) Relocation to Uzhgorog, Ukraine, 2022 relocation with family to Berlin. Father of two children. Gagik Kurginian lives and works in Berlin.

Born and raised in Berlin, Klaus Jurgeit (1937–2017) remained closely connected to the city throughout his life and painted it in several fantastic series – among them the Berliner Hinterhöfe, Zimmer (and Punks).
In the early 1980s, Jurgeit began to paint Berlin interiors in watercolour on paper – rooms, often in squatted houses, sometimes also depicting their residents, who were sitting in their rooms. The pictures are compositionally convincing, excellent from an artistic standpoint, and with an astonishing attention to detail he has painted the entire interior with finesse and precision. Some of the works are veritable hidden object pictures, and there are always new discoveries to be made when looking at them.
In the same period – up until the 1990s – Jurgeit also painted backyards in Berlin. These are sometimes desolate places that, through painting them meticulously, suddenly become subjects worth depicting and contemplating. The paintings in both series are independent works of art and at the same time documents of the time – images of a bygone era.
A third series comprises portraits of punks whom Jurgeit met on the streets of Berlin and whom he asked to let him paint them.

HIGHER STATES OF MATTER – 2022/2024 –

Trapped between the universal and the particular. Salt as an element of illusion, through a journey into an unknown planet.

Introduction by Paolo Nocentini – Higher states of matter is an investigation of space carried out through a change in the subject’s perspective, a revelation in which the artist finds a now transfigured reality, a space in which an apparent collection of evidence opens up to the fantastic. The attempt at reconstruction falls into phantasmatic voids where the element is created, used, buried, excavated, transported and repositioned, the living forms presenting themselves anew to the photographer by changing their appearance and now showing their dark, silent profile. The viewer is invited to enter a world where the real and the unreal intersect. The work is a meditation on the power we have to act on images (and thus memories) simultaneously, as if it were the same movement, on the power images have to change us.
The even mental landscape that “Higher states of matter” leaves to us, indeed invites us to explore, is rather a threshold between phenomenon and being – a wasted land, perhaps itself a remnant like an unlit satellite showing only its hidden face. We are then overcome by a shiver of fear or loneliness: this world could be ours, we ourselves its relicts.

Videoworks by students of Aalto University Helsinki, Finland

Reetta Saarikoski, Sandra Enkvist, Erik Vartiainen, Katja Niemi

Still foto: Reetta Saarikoski

Valérie Potvin’s QUARTZ exhibition at ROSALUX explores the metaphor of the “female body as battlefield” in relation to feminicide and women’s rights struggles, and highlights how female bodies are often at the center of social, political and economic conflicts. The artist presents Berlin audiences with a ground-breaking ecofeminist work that associates the destruction of nature with that of women, establishing a visual link between the female body and the mineral world.

The body appears as a ghost, either encapsulated in a green crystalline resin, or colorless; frozen, adorned with snakes, or in a posture suggesting a sacred or ritual dimension. The work plunges the visitor into a strange fictional universe, a world where these female bodies and nature seem to regain their power in the face of destruction. By offering an open space for reflection, the work questions the contradictions inherent in our world, oscillating between light and darkness, and revealing the complexities of the human condition.

Valérie Potvin lives and works between Canada and Germany. She holds an interdisciplinary master’s degree in arts as well as a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from Laval University in Canada. Her research has been supported by numerous institutions and has been awarded prizes in Quebec and Canada. Her works have notably been presented at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, Canada, at SESC Pinheiros in São Paulo, Brazil, and at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, USA.

Her multidisciplinary practice includes sculptural installations, public art, and video. She creates large-scale, immersive works that challenge viewers’ perceptions and explore social, environmental, political, and feminist issues. Her art delves into themes of identity, body, power, sexuality, and death, provoking questions and emphasizing ethical and urgent issues.

With the support of the Québec Government Office in Germany

31 August – 6 October 2024
Thu – Sun, 2 – 6 pm
Artist talk 6 October 2024, 3 pm

Site-specific colours combine colour and location, as a type of topographical perception through local colour. What colour producing plants and minerals can be found in this place, and how can they be perceived and understood through colour? Plant knowledge is knowledge of place. The project explores topics of plant blindness, urban ecology, mapping, bio-invasiveness, and migration as well as Zero Waste, Queer Ecologies, and Interspecies Cooperation.

This project has resulted in site-specific colour charts that record, map, and characterise a place; including the fact that, depending on the soil conditions – this also includes pollution and man-made soil compositions – different colours and tones are produced. The same applies to the water composition, acidity, and mineral content.

During production, processes such as fermentation, oxidation and modification by iron or copper oxide, and shifting the pH value bring out colours, and intensify and stabilise them. For the exhibition a series of charts has been created for 12 locations in (initially) Berlin, over the course of a year and through all phases of plant cycles.

The workshop Hidden Colours. Inkmaking with Plants in Urban Space by Käthe Wenzel took place in July 2024 and some of the results will also be displayed in the exhibition.

Colour Topographies

Käthe Wenzel is an artist and researcher working with hybrid bodies, queer ecologies, and the structures of urban consumption. She provides machines and survival kits for the navigation of hegemonic culture and explores the knowledge of plants. Wenzel is a professor of aesthetic practice at the European University Flensburg, and she was a Fulbright Exchange Scholar in New York and a Senior Fellow at IFK/Vienna.

She has received numerous grants and scholarships, including the Stiftung Kulturfonds, Böll Foundation, NRW Stipendium Kunst-Wissenschaft-Wirtschaft, Karin-Abt-Straubinger-Stiftung, Künstlerdorf Schöppingen and others. Her works are represented in numerous public collections, including the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, Museum Weserburg Bremen, LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur – Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Roemer-Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim, Museum Oldenburg, Mittelrheinmuseum, the Künstlerbuch collection at Telavi State University, Georgia, and others.
www.kaethewenzel.de
www.globalupfitters.com

Archive Exhibitions 2003-2022:
https://goodold.koloniewedding.de/sporkluebue/index.html

NI versus AI

Bas CS Gallery (in the frame of Kolonie Wedding e.V.) invites everyone to the group-exhibition Natural Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence, NI versus AI.
The opening of the exhibition will take place on February 23 at 18:00.

The exhibition will last until March 22.
During the exhibition, various master classes, lectures and workshops will take place. Look for info on insta, fb and so on.
Gallery open hours, Sat, San, from 2 to 8 pm.

An’ it harm none, do what thou wilt

Exhibition by Okta Collective & friends

With the artworks by Dovile Aleksaite, Lucy Kerr, Alisi Telengut (Okta Collective), Tobi Keck, Cammack Lindsey

Opening: 26.01.2024, 19:00h

Performance by Cammack Lindesy: 26.01.2024,19:30h

curated exhibition by Okta Collective at rosalux project space, as part of “Vorspiel transmediale”, explores the ideas of witchcraft as a conceptual framework for healing and transformation in our turbulent time. The programming includes installations of video works, sculptures, textile, and a live performance in the project space. These works share in a collective feeling of longing. Longing for healing, for transformation, for magic, for resurrection, and for solidarity. The title  ‘An’ it harm none, do what thou wilt’  instructs in old-fashioned language one to follow what they long for, as long as it does not harm oneself or others.

Aleksaite’s textile print features the yarrow plant (Achillea Millefolium). It is one of the oldest archaic herbal plants, having been used in healing and magic. Formerly referred to as the “witch’s herb,” Yarrow possesses strong energy and healing powers, symbolizing courage and energetic healing.

The extremely close up portraits in Sensible Ecstasy by Lucy Kerr resemble ecstasies of female saints, expressing desires to extend beyond the limits of the body and touch the sky, while mobilized by roller coasters – apparatuses that capitalize on this desire.

Sound is employed to forge connections within a community that extends beyond human boundaries in Alisi Telengut’s hand-made animation titled ‘Tears of Inge,’ where sound and music reconcile a painful camel and her newborn baby.

Tobi Keck’s installation preserves hand-carved vegetables in alcohol to extract their vivid natural colors and pigments, evoking medieval alchemical and material practices.

The exhibition also features a live performance at the opening by Cammack Lindsey, where a haunting concert emerges, portraying a blend of folklore and worker songs. Lindsey utilizes original self-made instruments and granular synthesis, materializing magic to resurrect ghosts in this unique banjo ballad singing.

BIOS

Cammack Lindsey composes political holobiotical musicals that investigate scientific and historical relics of failures from extractive capitalism to embody stories of collective resistance. In forms of storytelling, sound-art, performance and installations, they collaborate with Cyanobacteria, DIY BioArt/hacking techniques, the voice, noise, & the materialization of colors, magic and ghosts.

Tobi Keck (*1987) is a visual artist based in Berlin. In a wide range of different media, his works circle around basic human notions such as fear, vanity, time or escapistic fantasies. In objects and installations, he preserves carved vegetables in alcohol, replicates thousands of fossils into plaster or even buries an imaginary cat in a grave under a bridge.

Dovilė Aleksaitė is a Lithuanian artist, working with video and performance. Her practice explores the questions of anthropocentric worldview, notions of nature and time, emotions and human vs. non-human consciousness. Her works were presented in group exhibitions at  the Centre Pompidou, at the AdK Berlin, at HKW, and New York German House among others.

Alisi Telengut is a Canadian artist of Mongolian roots, living between Berlin, Germany and Tiohtià:ke/ Montréal, Canada. She is an award winning animation filmmaker. Alisi’s work has been screened and exhibited internationally, such as at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Sundance Film Festival, TIFF, Biennial VIDEONALE at Kunstmuseum Bonn, OSTRALE Biennale, Anthology Film Archives, Image Forum Japan, among others.

Lucy Kerr (b. Houston, Texas 1990) is a filmmaker, artist, choreographer, and educator. In 2022, she was named one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film in Filmmaker Magazine. Kerr’s projects have been presented by Locarno Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, FIDMarseille, San Sebastian International Film Festival, Reykjavik International Film Festival, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, REDCAT, Anthology Film Archives, Francois Ghebaly Gallery, The McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, and others.

Opening Fri 29. Sep 2023, 7 pm

Artists
Sahar Nahavandi Nejad, Atefeh Mehrvarz, Minoo Kiani,
Azin Rostami, Raheleh Ghavipanjeh, Behnam Bakhshizadeh,
Farhad Gavzan, Hossein Ghafouri

The exhibition is complemented by smaller works on the same topic by Toolbox members Maija Helasvuo, Sampsa Indrén, Mika Karhu, Niina Räty, Juha Sääski and Ilkka Sariola.

Curated by  Farhad Gavzan and Ilkka Sariola

The exhibition “Wounds” is very special. Toolbox is honoured to present Iranian art, in particular drawings by eight contemporary Iranian artists: Sahar Nahvandi Nejad, Atefeh Mehrvarz, Minoo Kiani, Azin Rostami, Rheleh Ghavipanjeh, Farhad Gavzan, Behnam Bakhshi and Behnam Bakhshizadeh. In addition to Iranian art, some of our TOOLBOX members, Maija Helasvuo, Mika Karhu, Juha Sääski, Sampsa Indren and Ilkka Sariola, will also be presenting some smaller works.

The theme of the exhibition, wound, is ambiguous; everyone has their own invisible wounds, the wounds of violence may appear as scars and the traces of war as open bleeding wounds. We live in critical times and societies are threatened by the Corona pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In fact, the pandemic and the ‘quarantine galleries’ on Instagram, which took place in the year 2020, were the starting point for this exhibition. In the difficult early stages of the pandemic, Iran ended up in a complete lockdown and quarantine. The artist Mr Farhad Gavzan was interested in my artworks on Instagram and he presented some of my artworks in the “Quarantine Gallery” he founded. This gave me the idea to create a cultural exchange project “Quarantine gallery, drawings from Iran and Finland”. I ended up posting 78 days, Instastories and on my wall, from 18.3. – 1.6. 2020, representing as many artists from Iran and Finland. During this project I received many messages from Iranian and Finnish artists who appreciated this cultural art exchange. Many asked if I could represent their artworks. I was impressed by the powerful expression of the works of Iranian artists, often women. I experienced how a drawn picture touches across cultural borders. Now, after more than three years, I have the honour of presenting the works of 8 Iranian artists live in the Toolbox Gallery. This exhibition is curated by my friend Farhad Gavzan and I. The process has been challenging for many unfortunate reasons, but also rewarding. I thank I thank everyone involved in organizing the exhibition in Iran, Berlin and Finland, especially Farhad Gavzan, Andreas Wolf and rest of our Toolbox crew.

HyungJun Park’s solo exhibition Artificial Consciousness. Exposing the Invisible: Data, Rendering and Code brings together three artworks, created in the last fifteen years. Park’s artistic exploration focuses on the relationship between machine and humans as well as humans and nonhuman beings. He connects and exposes nonhuman sensorial experiences through technological tools for human body experiences that mimic other perceptions.

Somniloquy is Park’s ongoing research and his Ph.D. project, focusing on human and machine dreaming. Park has been keeping dream diaries to explore human and machine consciousness. Within the hype of AI tools and their accessibility, machine learning tools have been used more often in the new media art scene in recent years. AI tools have been criticised as heavily biased – white, Eurocentric, homophobic and misogynist through the content it has learned from its users. In contrast, in his artistic research, Park delves into machine learning from a subjective point of view and creates a unique dataset based on the dreams and images he has collected over the years. Based on his dreams, the AI tool creates (or dreams) new, humorous and absurd narratives based on the text and image that has been fed by the artist.

I am an Artefact explores what the soul is and traces the location of the soul in the human body through scientific and speculative perspectives. The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul was in the heart and the Babylonians believed that the soul was in the liver. Modern humans understand that there is no soul or that it is an emotion caused by a chemical reaction of the brain. The human body and soul are Park’s main concerns in this project, related to the technological age. The process of the artwork I am an Artefact started with full body MRI scans of himself. The artist created a series of objects with different materials, such as a 1:1 size of Park’s heart sculpted with beeswax, a head scan, that is used for a 3D printed glass sculpture, and forefinger prints sculpted with aerogel – a material which is renowned as the lightest solid. Through this set of works, Park has given a speculative, physical agency to the soul and distributed the meaning of the soul and its materiality to ‘natural and artificial materials.’

Utopia is an interface that allows the audience to explore visual senses from a nonhuman perspective. This interface aims to create a connection between humans and machines. Analog monitors symbolise the anatomical eyes of humans. A funnel is installed in front of the monitor, so the audience can only see each monitor with one of their eyes independently. Human vision, unlike spiders or insects, cannot see both objects at the same time. However, by looking at the two monitors with this separation, the audience gains a new visual and cognitive experience, exploring the expandability of their human senses.

HyungJun Park lives and works in Berlin and explores interdisciplinary artwork through collaboration with various research institutes. In 2012, he collaborated with the Institut für Diagnostische und Interventionelle Radiologie in Düsseldorf, Germany, and in 2013, he resided and worked at the Institute of Machinery Research in Korea. In 2015, he was selected for the scholarship residency called Arts-Science-Economy in Schöppingen, Germany. His work was exhibited and collected at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany (ZKM). He is a person who likes to be open and his works are based on art and science. His interests include visual cognition, computer technology, the philosophical self and the artistic body.

More information at https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/exhibitions/artificial-consciousness/

In space it is silent

In Mirjam Dorsch’s spatial installation, two worlds are interwoven that could not be further apart. Do they have anything in common? What do these worlds make up? A floor installation made of carpet and absorbent cotton, which can be walked on via a stage catwalk and is reminiscent of our Milky Way, is juxtaposed with a sound from an individual world, a state in which the senses are asleep and unconscious life takes place.

Similar to the principle of equivalence, with which Albert Einstein opened up the theory of relativity, there is also a cosmic frame shift in snoring. The sound, which is obstructive to sleep, both to the sleeping person and to the person lying awake, allows quite different associations in the black-bedded public space.

The absorbent cotton lies like star mist over the black high pile. Acoustic material moves at regular intervals through the 42 square meter exhibition space. With a steady hum and coo, the universe seems to breathe. Can we suspect something alive in the cosmos? And if so, is it asleep? Might we not be alone after all? And couldn’t that be reassuring? Suspicions of extraterrestrial life go back to the 1970s in a scientific context.

Poetic and playful narratives have long replaced the powerful, religious narratives and always create material for new flights of fancy. The title of the exhibition can also be a glimmer of hope, a mantra: “in space it is silent”- when the sound of sleep, the snoring of another, robs you of your own sleep.

Statment Mirjam Dorsch

“In my sculptural work I encounter various materials and techniques that accompany me in my work routine and combine, overlap or detach. Elements of art production and the art business are thematized and sometimes playfully exchanged or shifted in order to show their characteristics and to enable new perspectives. The perspective is thereby a shifting frame that directs the view to that which is not immediately perceptible and appears as a gap. The analysis and treatment of natural and processed materials reveal connections that can be questioned and are inspiring to my creative process.”

Further Infos: https://npiece.com/mirjam-dorsch?l=de

Opening: Fr, 29.09.2023, 19:00

Opening times:
Sat, 30.09. + Sun, 01.10., 15:00-18:00
and by tel. appointment: Tel. +49 (0)179 8593744

Fragmentary and intentionally enigmatic in its form, Song Circle offers a collection of vignettes, of tableaux where the quest for meaning competes with emotion’s immediacy. A subtle melancholy surfaces, related to solitude and to the pervasive sensation that comes with incessantly seeking out the other, which will invariably lead us back to our own feelings of confusion.

This emotion, at times, distilled in crescendos, other times entirely withheld, proffers a dreamlike narrative diffracted between the real and the imaginary, between a mental projection and the image projected. At times, the past is conjugated into the present or is tuned to the unfathomable time called the future. Strange but familiar, the visited places seem unchanging, the living unreachable, introspective, or absorbed in gestures that attest to their presence in the world. 

A visual chorale, Song Circle is crosscut with synaptic sound. The musical score is a protagonist, embodied as much by the instruments as by the musicians. Meticulously deconstructed to infiltrate and even dominate the ambient sounds, music brings friction between those spaces and times which ignore each other, enabling furtive encounters, bringing people together with no other purpose than the passage of time kept in beat by the metronome.

Song Circle goes everywhere, except in a straight line. Its convolutions, like circles in the water, echo without ever touching, listening to better see and looking without hearing, all in an infinite loop. From such ellipses emerges a work of profound humanity, from which no one will retain quite the same thing. Alone, together. — F.C.

The Québec artist Anne-Renée Hotte completed a master’s degree in visual and media arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal (2016), following a bachelor’s degree in photography from Concordia University (2010). Her work has been presented a.o. at the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides (St-Jérôme), the Musée des beaux arts de Sherbrooke, Galerie Artem (France), Galerie de l’UQÀM (Montréal), Volta New York. Recipient of the PRIM-Dazibao residency, which led to the realization of Song Circle. Her work can be found in several public and private collections.

With the support of the Québec Government Office in Germany

‘Cinco Retratos’ [Five Portraits] is a twenty-two minute black and white looping installation made by Gabriela Alcofra and Billy Cowie, completed in 2023. It investigates the possibility of shared territory between fine art portraiture, early film and dance. Each of the portraits uses a single projected photograph superimposed on the face of Gabriela, magically transforming her into five distinct characters. Her micro-choreographed facial movements produce a variety of effects as the projected and real features move in and out of sync with each other. When aligned the composite images appear almost normal but when misaligned take on extreme distortions reminiscent of Francis Bacon portraits and Cubist imagery. The sequences explore ideas of feminine beauty, emotional expression through facial movement, and the concept of perception flipping (where the brain jumps back and forth between two interpretations of an image as happens often in optical illusions).

8th part of the on-going project unfinished actions

by Elena Ilina and Christine Häuser

collages, photo processing

Vernissage 27.10.2023 at 19 h

Opening hours 29.10.23 from 14 to 18 h

Atelier Soldina Soldiner Str. 92 Berlin 13359

An exhibition of drawings from Jake Sherwood. All of these drawings were painted in Berlin, on the street or in a market, during the last 3 years. Some of the sitters are reading a poem.

Charcoal, pastel, acrylic ink, recycled plastic, tape, graphite, turmeric, hairspray.

There are performances that stop. Disappointments that meets us – new.

There will be a live music performance during the opening. Free Entry.

Live music Performer: joris rose
Performance time: Friday 25th of August, 7pm
Curator(s): Araiké Treccani Da Silva, Michelle o’Higgins

For the first time in Berlin
Phantom Gallery – Medium Drawing
Phantom Gallery presents international artists living in Germany who work with the medium of drawing.
Phantom Gallery was purchased in 2022 in New York and is an ongoing project of the Dead Artists Society (2006 – ∞). Pop-up exhibitions have been organized in collaboration with other galleries, curators and exhibition venues.
The exhibition at Berlin’s Künstlerkolonie Wedding was initiated in cooperation with Blah-Blah Project Raum, Berlin + Drawing Radio, Woltersdorf.

Opening: Friday, August 25, 6–9pm

Soldiner Str. 103 , 13359 Berlin

Opening hours:

Sat. August 26, 1–4pm

Sun. August 27, 1–4pm

Artists: 

Catherine Lorent https://catherinelorent.net

Ricarda Hoop https://ricardahoop.de/

Frank Diersch http://frank-diersch.de/

Marcus Neufanger https://vandergrintengalerie.com/artists/marcus-neufanger/

Michael Kalmbach  http://michaelkalmbach.de

MishMash http://www.mishmash.ru

Dead Artists Society – Jackson Pollock 
http://juliakissina.com/artworks/dead-artists-society/

Laura Bruce   https://www.laura-bruce.com

Julia Kissina http://juliakissina.com 

Klaus Killisch www.klaus-killisch.de

Andrey Klassen https://www.andreyklassen.com

Anton Laiko http://www.cargocollective.com/antonlaiko

Kata Unger  http://www.kata-unger.com/

Raymond Pettibon

Drawing Radio: https://radio-woltersdorf.org/redaktion-drawing-radio/

Image Title: @Klaus Killisch

Niina Räty (painting and drawing), Maija Helasvuo (wood sculptures)

25.8.-23.9.2023
Opening hours: Wed-Sat 3pm-7pm

Closed on bank holidays

Maija Helasvuo

My sculptures shown in the exhibition were created in memory of my deceased relatives.
In the old Finnish belief, the bird acts as a messenger between the living and the dead. So the connection to the afterlife is always there.

Fig.: From Spring to Autum, 2021, Photo: Jussi Tiainen

Niina Räty

I have a dog who brings joy and structure to my life. She trusts me, eagerly keeps me company, and makes ordinary days more meaningful. She is considered my property. Animals are traded, they are milked, sheared and slaughtered, they are made to carry and compete. Is it even possible to build a relationship with an animal without seeking benefits?

Toolbox Cabinet

In the cabinet, two music archaeologists will introduce themselves.
One from Finland and one from Berlin:
Dr. Arnd Adje Both
Dr. Riitta Rainio
An archaeomusicological installation consisting of a virtual reality video and ceramic sculptures of instrumentalists will be presented.

The virtual reality videos bring to life the soundscape at the rock painting site of Siliävuori, Finland, about 5,000 years ago. The painted rock cliff rising directly from the lake responds to drumming and singing with echoes. Rock painting sites with images of animals, humans, boats and even drummers are believed to have been ritual sites for prehistoric hunter-fisher-gatherers.
The virtual reality reconstruction of Silävuori was made in collaboration between archaeologists, musicologists and cognitive scientists from the University of Helsinki, using terrestrial and aerial laser scans, spherical photography, spatial impulse response recordings, studio recordings and convolution. The work was part of Dr. Riitta Rainio’s project ”Acoustics and auditory culture at hunter-gatherer rock art sites in Northern Europe, Siberia and North America” funded by the Academy of Finland (2018–2023).

Neo-Geo is a 2024 series of paintings in which I am searching more for a feeling than achieving a predetermined aesthetic. I let the shapes, forms and lines emerge intuitively, the decisions made are more visceral than cerebral. It’s an exciting process; I don’t know what the end result will be until I reach the point of ‘this is it’.

heatherallen.net
@heather_allen_art

Guest exhibition of Dutch artists in InteriorDAsein and Toolbox. In collaboration with Kunstruimte 411, Haarlem, Netherlands. Curated by Hans Kuiper and Archi Galentz.

With works by Marius van Zandwijk (painting), Aquil Copier (painting), Piet Zwaanswijk (print and collage), Jessica Assmann-Zwaanswijk (painting), Sina Khani (painting), Ilja Warmerdam (painting), MC de Waal (photography), Antonio Rego (digital drawing prints), Gerard Veldman (painting), Daan van Houten (drawing/woodcut),  Rene Bosch (photography/Painting), Tarik Sadouma (AI-Print)  and Hans Kuiper (drawing/painting). 

In dialogue with Berlin artists: Gisa Hausmann, Jelisaweta Klutschewskaja, Edwin Dickman, Klaus Jürgeit, Tamara Ivanova, Marina Koldobskaja, Jovan Balov,  Thomas J.Richter, Cristina Artola, Svenja Schüffler, Markus Schaller, Gagik Kurginian, Julia Katan, Julia Kissina, Patrick Huber and others.

Opening on Friday, October 25th from 7 p.m. in InteriorDAsein, supervised by Archi Galentz and at the same time in ToolBox, supervised by Hans Kuiper

Opening hours after the colony weekend by prior arrangement.
Finissage on November 24th from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in ToolBox and from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. in InteriorDAsein.

KOOK: Festival zu zeitgenössischen Positionen der Visuellen Poesie
/Festival on contemporary positions in visual poetry
27. 09. – 17.10.2024
kuratiert von/curated by Kathrin Bach & Erec Schumacher

mit Arbeiten von/with works by: Kathrin Bach, Anke Becker, Mara Genschel, Victoria Hohmann, Elena Kaufmann, Titus Meyer, Mario Osterland, Johann Reißer/Ursula Seeger, Simone Scharbert, Carsten Schneider, Erec Schumacher und Andreas Töpfer

Eröffnung/Opening: Fr/Fri, 27.09.2024, 19:00
19:30 Lesung/Reading, Performance, Gespräch/Conversation mit/with Katrin Bach, Mara Genschel, Mario Osterland, Erec Schumacher

Veranstaltungen/Events:
Di/Tue, 08.10.2024, 19:30
_Lesung/Reading, Performance, Gespräch/Conversation mit/with Victoria Hohmann, Titus Meyer, Simone Scharbert und Carsten Schneider

Finissage: Di/Tue, 15.10.2024, 19:30
_Lesung/Reading, Performance, Gespräch/Conversation mit/with Anke Becker, Elena Kaufmann, Johann Reißer/ Ursula Seeger und Andreas Töpfer

Öffnungszeiten/Opening hours: Di/Tue-Do/Thu: 16:00-19:00, Sa/Sat: 15:00-19:00

On September 27th, the small, fine KOOK festival “Das lässt sich sehen – contemporary positions in visual poetry” begins in the project space Spor Klübü in Berlin-Wedding with the opening of a group exhibition. With Kathrin Bach, Anke Becker, Mara Genschel, Victoria Hohmann, Elena Kaufmann, Titus Meyer, Mario Osterland, Johann Reißer/ Ursula Seeger, Simone Scharbert, Carsten Schneider, Erec Schumacher and Andreas Töpfer, a total of 13 artists are showing their works of visual poetry in the exhibition.

Visual poetry is hybrid, diverse and dynamic and is one of the most exciting and diverse forms of expression in contemporary literature. Visual poetry leaves the pure text level and acts graphically, typographically, photographically, reduced, non-linearly, experimentally, subversively, radically, skeptically, playfully, sociopolitically, enigmatically, narratively. Visual poetry makes interrelationships visible and manifests collective artistic work. It deconstructs, reassembles, zooms in and out, turns everything into material, collages, recycles and composts.

The festival “Das lässt sich sehen – contemporary positions in visual poetry” brings visual poetry, which mainly takes place on the Internet, in all its diversity into the analogue space. In a group exhibition and three events with readings, performances and talks, the artists deal with different approaches, working methods and artistic processes, with collectives and networks – and their poetic potential.

At the vernissage on September 27th, the artists and authors Kathrin Bach, Mara Genschel, Mario Osterland and Erec Schumacher will give insights into their work and artistic practices in discussions, readings and performances.

In the minimalist and poetically enigmatic collages of the poet Kathrin Bach, objects enter into strange symbioses and are an expression of a vulnerability between departure, hesitation and the desire to be interwoven. The writer Mara Genschel questions the mechanisms of the literary world with visual, conceptual and performative poetry, whether as discourse tourist Cindy Press, as a mustache wearer at the Bachmann Prize, as a self-publisher of reference surfaces or in her video “Work”, which shows her working in front of her computer. The poet Mario Osterland mixes lyrical prose, poem fragments and poetic notes in his collage series “HALOs”. Thematically, he deals with comforting imagery and secularized holiness based on his experiences of the Corona period. The writer and publisher Erec Schumacher plays through a wide variety of methods of visual and conceptual poetry in his now 26-part chapbook series. He poeticizes the German Civil Code, arranges poems from doorbell signs, writes typewritings, pictograms and collages and experiments with poster art or instant cameras.

A project by the independent artists’ network KOOK e.V.
In cooperation with Spor Klübü. Project management: Erec Schumacher

With the kind support of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.

Press contact: Jutta Büchter, buechter@kookverein.de
KOOK im Netz/KOOK on the web: kookverein.de | facebook.com/kook.verein

Frans van Tartwijk (NL, 1963) is a dutch painter and performance artist. His work has been exhibited in many galleries and art spaces in the Netherlands and abroad. He recently took part in a residency in Chengdu (China), together with Guda Koster.

Jean-Philippe Rousset (Fr, 1973) graduated at the Art Academy of Clermont-Ferrand. His lives and works in Amsterdam. Since 2018 he forms an artistduo with Jean-Philippe Paumier (JP&JP) and exhibits regularly in and around Amsterdam.

Jean-Philippe Paumier (Fr, 1980) mostly creates sculptures and installations based on the principles of ‘ready-made’ and ‘objet trouvé’. His work has been showed in several artspaces, art fairs and galleries in the Netherlands and abroad.

www.fransvantartwijk.nl
www.paumier.weebly.com

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloerstraße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

„Failures NOIR – (Kriege) im Post-Truth“
Stefan Römer
26.10. – 09.11.2024

Eröffnung/Opening: Freitag/Friday, 25.10.2024, 19:00

Öffnungszeiten und Veranstaltungen/Opening hours and events:
Sa/Sat, 26.10., 15:00 –18:00, Lesung #1/Reading #1, 16:00
So/Sun, 27.10., 15:00 –18:00

Finissage: Sa/Sat, 09.11., 15:00 –18:00, Lesung #2/Reading #2, 16:00
geöffnet/open: 28.10. – 08.11. nach tel. Vereinbarung/by appointment: 0179-8593744

In his exhibition “Failures NOIR – (Wars) in the Post-Truth” at Spor Klübü, Stefan Römer is showing new works: Film stills from “Der Gelbe Film” and date paintings on canvas.

“Der Gelbe Film” by Stefan Römer is an artistic commentary on the current multiple wars and crises and is currently in the production phase. Filmmaker Derek Jarman bid farewell with his last film “Blue” before he died of HIV. And Hartmut Bitomsky analyzed the connection between economics and semiotics in the production of films in his book “Die Röte des Rots von Technicolor”. “Der Gelbe Film” now extends these two different film approaches to the warlike present, which is characterized by political arbitrariness and lies. Yellow as a bright positive color attempts a poetic/ethical synthesis in image and sound. The non-representational abstract yellow film stills, characterized by a visual delicacy, are placed in a historical framework of powerful events by the new cycle of date paintings: Failures NOIR

The yellow film stills and the date paintings form arrangements on the exhibition walls, to which theme-oriented works by other artists such as Louise Lawler and Thomas Ruff are also added. The exhibition also features the installation “The Artistic Mind of S. R.”, in which videos and films can be seen alongside text printouts by Stefan Römer.

Bio
Stefan Römer is a de-conceptual artist. His works are known for their critical use of different media. They combine practice and theory in visual, musical, spatial and performative practices. He is concerned with a critical examination of conceptualism and new media, aiming to address a social and political audience. He researches topics with high social relevance: “Strategies of Fake”, “Conception of an Image Archive for Migrants and Refugees” or the documentary film “Boulevard of Illusions. Differentiated Neighborhoods”.
In his art, he experiments with a transmedial approach in post-panoptic, feminist and post-colonial references. Artistic writing serves him as: Self-exploration, self-empowerment and self-defense. Among other things, this can also lead to the composition of pop songs.

Ausstellungen zuletzt solo//Recent solo exhibitions:
„Failures NOIR”, Chambre Directe – SCHUBIGER, St. Gallen/Schweiz 2024
„ReCoded Failures – A Transcategorial Retrospective”, Periode project space, Berlin 2022 „DeConceptualize – the project”,kjubh Kunstverein, Köln 2021

Gruppenausstellungen//Group shows:
„Dystopia Sound Art Biennale”, Berlin 2024
„Broken Music Vol. 2″, Museum Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2023

https://stefanroemer.com/de

Denis Oding. Zeitgeist
Exhibition opening 25.10.2024, 18:00.
BAS CS Gallery Berlin
Soldinerstraße 103, Berlin

Denis Oding is an artist based in Saint Petersburg and Berlin, also known as the creator of large-scale light media installations and massive rave events. Perhaps the sound of the surname Oding and his German roots somehow foreshadowed his fascination with Germanic-Scandinavian mythology. He began to study sources and track news on his favorite topic — from scientific books and magazines, to the world-conquering industry of Viking serials, fantasy blockbusters and computer games. 

Today, Denis Oding can be considered the last master actualizingGermanic-Scandinavian mythology in Russian art of the twenty-first century. The talent of Oding was formed in the era of cultural revolution at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. The artists of this generation stand out due to the absence of dogmas and dynamic development of forms and means of creativity. Denis started his career in art at the famous artistic squat in Svechnoy Lane, 1, where he and his friends created fluorescent paintings in bright «acid» style and designed spaces where the once unseen social life flared up. 

In 2010's Oding «gets infected» with mythology and sagas, travels through Norway and works on the «Midgard» cycle («Middle Earth» — in ancient legends — a world inhabited by people). These were meditative landscapes of majestic fjords in pastel tones.

Artists are often attributed with visionary abilities, and indeed, in 2020-2022 Oding, as if anticipating the outbreak of war in the center of Europe, suddenly begins to work on a new cycle dedicated to the kingdom of fire — Muspelheim. Edda describes the origin of life as follows: "In the beginning there was nothing but the black abyss of Ginnungagap, on both sides of which lay kingdoms: mist — Niflheim (personification of cold and darkness) and fire — Muspelheim. Muspelheim was guarded by a fiery giant, Surtr, with a flaming sword in his hands. (...) On the day of Ragnarök, his hordes will move north «like a southern wind» to fight against the Æsir gods. In the final battle Surtr will kill Freyr, his sword will cut down the world tree Yggdrasil, and this will be the beginning of the death of the whole world».

The calm, contemplative mood of Oding’s paintings is now replaced by an alarming dynamic, contrast and bright color flickering. The artist has created several dozen different works on paper and canvas in oil pastel technique. One of the four main world elements is presented by the artist in different hypostases: fiery Gehenna, family hearth, spirit of fire Salamandra and so on. The stylistics of the master are equally diverse: from photorealism to stenciling under a runic ornament, graffiti and imagery close to the genre of fantasy.

At this exhibition, Denis presents seven works depicting fire, which can be stylistically defined as both hyper realistic and semi-abstract. In these paintings sophisticated audiences can feel formal signs of what the creator of the «formal method» of art study — the great art historian Heinrich Wölflin — describes as «German» and in general «northern» «sense of form». In the book «Italy and the German sense of form» (1931) Wölflin writes: «In German art emphasis is placed on the general movement of forms, a movement that depends (...) to a very substantial extent on the play of light and shadow. This general movement of the forms in the North is manifested in everything: in the drawing of hands and feet, in the drawing of wood and bush, in the drawing of waves on the surface of water and atmospheric phenomena occurring in the sky. (...) You see not the individual shape of one toe next to another, but a moving cob of forms, and with all the precision of the transmission of the leafy plant of the German can always be recognized by the peculiar sensation of life in the tangle of leaves. (...) Germans also discover early a tendency to draw one single in the common current».

There is a story by Oding himself about how the original theme of fire arose in his work: «I worked in Misha Barkhin's workshop (a famous architect - A.K.) in Moscow. Once, I bought a luxury edition of «Younger Edda» and began to read it with pleasure. Never before had I paid attention to Surtr. He was somehow always in the shadow of Ymir, Odin, Thor, Loki and even the cows of Auðumbla. Although, in essence, Surtr is a firstborn god, and he also destroys everything and everyone in the end. “That’s it, real power”, I thought. And a week later the workshop burned down». 

Surprisingly, Oding is not the first St. Petersburg artist to kindle the archetypal fire: "the Moscow fire roared and burned...". In the 1990s, the capital was abuzz with rumors of a dashing arsonist, the artist-actor Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe. His unique performance in this genre was the incineration of the apartment of the Russian oligarch of the 90s, Boris Berezovsky. I repeat, artists are dangerous with their simple-minded prophetic gift.

Andrey Khlobystin

The musical design of the exhibition will be provided by the Leipzig-based sound producer Evgeny “ClerWolf” Shapovalov. Especially for this project, ClerWolf has prepared a series of urban remixes of medieval Scandinavian chants.

The Irish Room / Femmes sonores is a playful sound art installation by Canadian-Québec artist Jo-Anne Velin

at the COPYRIGHT project space, in which old audio archives of spoken and sung women’s voices were used.

“My intention was, originally, just to find these rare archives of female voices wherever I could, pull them out of

the back catalogues of ethnographic and oral history collections and plunk them right into the middle of a live

sound experience now. And I wanted to collapse the decades that separate us from them. I wanted them to

count!” (Jo-Anne Velin)

The Irish Room / Femmes sonores began with the discovery online of an important archive of audible samples

of “the dying dialects of Ireland” recorded between 1928 and 1931 by German linguist Wilhelm Doegen and

his recording technician, Karl Tempel. That team had been hired by an Irish commission shortly after most of the

island became the Irish Free State, following decades of violent rebellion against English control. Native

speakers were dying out: deaths during the famine fifty years earlier, and migration to find work elsewhere, had

shrunk the population by about one third. Out of 137 speakers who left samples of the sound of their language

to posterity, only 20 were women.

Imagine the sound of the past without male voices in the archives – there would be almost nothing left! Women

were barely recorded at all, by comparison. What would happen if we built a space that created its sonic mass

soley from female, and female-identified voices?

Quebec artist Jo-Anne Velin had started working in radio in the Canadian Arctic in the 80ties, and eventually in

Europe as a field reporter, broadcast news producer, and independent creative documentary film director,

before starting her formal research into the early history of microphones (and their precursors) and women’s

spoken voices.

Group exhibition with live music and performance program bringing together 70 artists from Berlin, Amsterdam and beyond, to promote the construction of new realities based on artistic visions and the importance of meeting and exhibiting art in the flesh.
The exhibition follows on from our 2011 flagship show, bringing the spirit of the art network back into physical space.

Organized by : Tiny Domingos (Berlin) × Hans Kuiper (Amsterdam)
A collaboration between :
* Art Space 411/Kunstruimte411 (Haarlem / mobile)
* ROSALUX (Berlin)

With: Wafae Ahalouch, Anne Amelang, Arjan van Amsterdam, Gonzalo Reyes Araos, Cristina Artola, Jessica Assmann-Zwaanswijk, René Bosch, Christoph Both-Asmus, Elisa Jule Braun, DAG, Bruno Domingos, Tiny Domingos, Bella Easton, Alexander Endrullat, El Hadji Mamadou Lamine Faye, Iliya Fogg, Archi Galentz, Margriet Gehrels, Jim Gladman, Alissa Guillouet, Niek Hendrix, Patrick Huber, Daan van Houten, Hubi W. Jäger, Patrick Jambon, Simone Kaltenegger, Tobi Keck, Sina Khani, Hans Kuiper, Anton Laiko, Ute Lindner, Dirk van Lieshout, Justina Los, Yiannis Loukos, Claudia Mulder, Beth Namenwirth, Eva van Ooijen, Natasha Papadopoulou, Guido Pera, Luciano Pinna, António Rego, Maarten Rots, Jean-Philippe Paumier, Jean-Philippe Rousset, Tarik Sadouma, Oscar Saldana, Michel Santos, Matti Schulz, Dagmar Schürrer, Martin Schepers, Stefanie Schwarzwimmer, Anton Schön, Marco Schmitt, Sean Smuda, Araiké Treccani da Silva, Ruth Spetter, Ivo Schouten, Jorrit Sinke, Moritz Stumm, Chika Takabayashi, Tiago Cutileiro, Rutger van der Tas, Marjolein van Veen, Sjimmie Veenhuis, Steffen Vogelezang, Linda Weiss, MC de Waal, Andreas Wolf, Marius van Zandwijk, Ilja Warmerdam, Thomas Weinberger & Benjamin Zuber, Piet Zwaanswijk, Igor Zaidel, a.o.

Guest exhibition of Dutch artists in InteriorDAsein and Toolbox. In collaboration with Kunstruimte 411, Haarlem, Netherlands. Curated by Hans Kuiper and Archi Galentz.

With works by Marius van Zandwijk (painting), Aquil Copier (painting), Piet Zwaanswijk (painting), Jessica Assmann-Zwaanswijk (painting), Sina Khani (filmmaker-performance artist), Ilja Warmerdam (painting), MC de Waal (photography), Antonio Rego (digital drawing prints), Gerard Veldman (painting), Daan van Houten (drawing/woodcut),  Rene Bosch (photography) and Hans Kuiper (drawing). In dialogue with Berlin artists

Opening on Friday, October 25th from 7 p.m. in InteriorDAsein, supervised by Archi Galentz and at the same time in ToolBox, supervised by Hans Kuiper

Opening hours after the colony weekend by prior arrangement.
Finissage on November 24th from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in ToolBox and from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. in InteriorDAsein.

Queer Sonic Fingerprint
Transdisciplinary Research
Isabel Bredenbröker and Adam Pultz

Opening: 19 October 2024, 8 pm
Running time: 20 October – 1 December 2024
Fri – Sun, 2 – 6 pm

Workshop: Recording Sonic Fingerprints. 30 November 2024, 2:30 -5 pm (registration not necessary)

How do bodies sound? And how can a group of cultural belongings in an ethnological museum collection resonate in unexpected queer kin relations? In their interactive multichannel sound installation Queer Sonic Fingerprint, sound artist Adam Pultz and anthropologist Isabel Bredenbröker speculatively imagines non-normative relations around cultural belongings in ethnological museums and beyond. The installation amplifies the collection‘s materiality through sonic fingerprints—that is—the reflections of a body’s acoustic characteristics. In a transdisciplinary encounter with sound processing and evolutionary computing, dynamically changing fingerprints bring selected parts of museum collections to life in a multichannel sonic ecology.

Queerness contains a tension, something which gender and sexuality studies scholar Susan Talburt identifies as a fundamentally productive quality. Cultural belongings in ethnographic collections are things deeply affected by the colonial encounter and its political aftermath. They, too, are caught in a tense state, as current debates about ownership, their history, their representative functions, and proper place come to show. Voices from indigenous communities and scholars have reframed so-called ethnographic “objects” in museum collections as person-like entities. The installation includes those relations that are currently being claimed with increasing insistence, alongside relations between collection items.

The playback of the sonic fingerprints will form part of a multichannel sound installation also involving field recordings and spoken narrative. Here, kinship and relations between objects become sonic relations, contributing a different register to what is traditionally a visual experience. Museum displays and collections are governed by strict rules: most things may not be touched and many things remain inaccessible in storage. In response to such restrictions, the sonic domain can provide access through a different sensory modality. Here, imagining a sonic image of these bodies offers a sensitive way of not looking or touching, not representing or claiming ownership.

Throughout the installation the sonic fingerprints will merge, recombine, and create new generations of virtual fingerprints with their own acoustic properties, evading museal categories and representational claims, just like queer identities and ways of kinning evade normative ideas of gender, relations, and sexuality. Through evolutionary computing and audience interaction, Queer Sonic Fingerprint highlights new object-relations that transcend the logic of the museum as a place of clear-cut display, education and safekeeping. A multisensory and interactive format challenges such established forms of museal practice. Through the speculative sonic-material futures that emerge, non-normative kinship and queer narratives work toward a critique of the ethnographic collection’s colonial roots.

Workshop: Recording Sonic Fingerprints. 30 November 2024, 2:30 -5 pm
In this workshop we will create sonic fingerprints, also called impulse responses, of objects. Participants are encouraged to bring their own objects, or use those found in the gallery. Participants are also invited to contribute contextual information in written, visual and oral form to the installation’s catalogue, augmenting their recording of the fingerprints themselves. The process of recording will elucidate how sound, and more generally, knowledge, is a function of the way in which one conducts measurements.

Once we have finished recording, we will load the fingerprints into the playback algorithm of Queer Sonic Fingerprint and listen to how the fingerprints change and evolve over time. The workshop will start with a short introduction explaining the techniques behind impulse response measurements and a overview of Karen Barad’s notion of the experimental apparatus.

Isabel Bredenbröker is a social and cultural anthropologist working between art and academia. They hold a DFG Walter Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellowship which is based between the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) and the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik at Humboldt University Berlin. Isabel’s work focusses on material and visual culture, anthropology of art and museums, queer theory and intersectionality, situatedness and autoethnography, colonialism, cleaning and waste. They have produced ethnographic films, worked with field recording and (co-)curated as well as contributed to exhibitions in museum and contemporary art contexts. Isabel’s book Rest in Plastic: Death, time and synthetic materials in a Ghanaian Ewe community has recently been published open access with Berghahn.
http://isabelbredenbroeker.com/

Adam Pultz Melbye is a double bass player, composer, and improviser working in the field of acoustic and electronic sound. Adam’s work spans live performance, sound installation, sound for dance, theatre, film, multimedia, sculpture, algorithmic design, and instrument building. They have performed and exhibited work in Europe, Australia, the US, and Japan, while appearing on close to 50 albums. Adam often performs with semi-autonomous feedback systems, such as the FAAB (feedback-actuated augmented bass). Adam holds a practice-led PhD in music technology from SARC, Queen’s University Belfast.
http://adampultz.com/

“Close To The Edge”
One Night Group Show

Performances from 20:30:
“Axe” Catherine Lorent, sound performance
“Blockiert” DJ Sporty Jack aka Matthias Mayer, music performance

Artists:

Boris Abel, Stefan Alber, Heather Allen, Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka V Stylianidou, Elena Alonso Fernández, Michelle Alperin, Deniz Alt, Detlef Baltrock, Gleb Bas, Jürgen Baumann, Hannah Becher, Matthias Beckmann, Thomas Behling, Antje Blumenstein, Theo Boettger, Sascha Boldt, Manuel Bonik, Gunnar Borbe, Iwona Lili Borkowska, Katja Brinkmann, Susanne Britz, Laura Bruce, Teresa Casanueva, barbara caveng, Sabatino Cersosimo, Chun-Tzu Chang, Kyung-hwa Choi-ahoi, Herbert De Colle, Ellen DeElaine, Almut Determeyer, Nanett Dietz, Nataly Dietz, Annedore Dietze, Bruno Di Lecce, Grigori Dor, Mirjam Dorsch, Stefan Draschan, Stefan Heinrich Ebner, Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout, Frederik Foert, Abrie Fourie, Frauke Funkhauser, Sven-Ole Frahm, Anne Gathmann, anna onno gatjal, Christine Gedeon, Laurie Georgopoulos, Robert Gfader, Monika Goetz, Karø Goldt, Massoud Graf-Hachempour, Harriet Groß, Stephan Groß, Andreas Hachulla, Stephanie Hanna, Andrea Hartinger, Michael Hauffen, Andreas Helfer, Thomas Bo Henriksson, Janne Höltermann, Sabine Hoffmann / Collision Squad, Margret Holz, Stephan Homann, Esther Horn, Fabian Hub, Markus Huemer, Franziska Hünig, Okka Hungerbühler, Hubi W. Jäger, Gunilla Jähnichen, Thomas Jocher, Anne Jungjohann, KP, Sven Kalden, Elena Karakitsou, Heike Kelter, Isabel Kerkermeier, Werner Kernebeck, Julia Kissina, Silke Koch, Karen Koltermann, Anette Kuhn, Susanne Kutter, Erika Krause, Patricia Lambertus, Oliver Lanz, Simone Lanzenstiel, Michael Lapuks, Anett Lau, Alex Lebus, Sabine Linse, Ronny Lischinski, Christine Lohr, Catherine Lorent, Justina Los, Mahony, John Maibohm, Nadja Marcin, Rei Matsushima, Matthias Mayer, Scott McCracken, David Möller, Thomas Monses, Matthias Moravek, Paula Muhr, Leo de Munk, Berit Myrebøe, Mascha Naumova, Joe Neave, Raúl Neddermeyer & Sarah Lüttchen, Enrico Niemann, Fernando Niño-Sánchez, Irina Novarese, Jennifer Oellerich, Nora Olearius, Claudia Olendrowicz, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Ornella Orlandini, Manfred Peckl, Torsten Prothmann, Katja Pudor, Luisa Puschendorf, Kathrin Rabenort, Nika Radić, Maria L. Räihälä, Øyvind Renberg, Pedro Reis de Mendonca, Benjamin Renter, Susanne Ring, Alex Roberts, Römer + Römer, Stefan Römer, Stefan Roigk, Annette Ruenzler, Julia Rüther, Andreas Sachsenmaier, Katrin Salentin, Daniel Sambo-Richter, Michel Santos, Grit Sauerborn, Birgit Schlieps, Sandra Schlipkoeter, Oliver Schmidt, Marco Schmitt, Michael Schultze, Olivia W. Seiling, Tanja Selzer, Kerstin Serz, Soji Shimizu, Frederic Spreckelmeyer, Heiko Sievers, Heidi Sill, Johanna Smiatek, Nicola Staeglich, Anna Staffel, Hans-Peter Stark, Gabriele Stellbaum, Astrid Stricker, Ralf Tekaat, Anja Teske, Miriam Tölke, Peter Torp, Petra Trenkel, Kata Unger, Claudia Virginia Vitari, Anke Völk, Gabriela Volanti, Gabriel Vormstein, Florian Wagner, Yvonne Wahl, Klaus Walter, Christine Weber, Linda Weiss, Bettina Weiß, Julia Werhahn, Anke Westermann, Daniel Wiesenfeld, Claudio Wichert, Markus Willeke, Ila Wingen, Markus Wirthmann, Ina Wudtke, Sibylle Zeh, Ella Ziegler, Elmar Zimmermann, Oliver Zwink

Intro:
Since 2005, quotes from past decades (mostly from the 1980s) have been the title of the annual One Night Group Shows at the end of November in Spor Klübü. Other projects, especially the pandemic, had led to a 4-year break in this exhibition format. Last year the thread was resumed with the exhibition “Zero Tolerance” and 135 participating artists. With 189 artists participating this time, the density of works in the exhibition space is again significantly increased.

“Close To The Edge”

The 1980s, the last decade of the Cold War, is characterized by the threat of violent disputes in the East-West conflict with initially rearmament and later disarmament, the opening up to the Eastern Bloc up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of neoliberalism, the actor Ronald Reagan as American president for two terms, the beginning of the era of Chancellor Kohl. A whole weird decade often on the edge. Grandmaster Flash And The Furious rapped in 1982 in their hook line: “Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge – I’m trying not to lose my head – It’s like a jungle sometimes – It makes me wonder how I keep from going under”. They bring the social criticism of the black, marginalized and oppressed population into hip-hop as proof of failed politics.

Switch. Over four decades later. Once again, an American re-elected President Trump enters his second term. With a sense of victory that can no longer be averted, he proclaims a coming golden age of America and a return to former greatness at the expense of the poor, the weak, those who think and live differently, women and migrants. The Ampelcoalition in Germany is falling apart. War and the Cold War are already making a comeback in Europe. The world is unsafe. Propaganda and lies instead of truths. Violent intimidation as normality. The law of the strong. Fascists are warming up. Will the punished attackers of the storming of the Capitol in January 2021 soon be pardoned?

Will the 1980s get a revival that will be even closer to the edge?

Exhibition documentation:
https://www.renterphoto.de/VirtualTour/CloseToTheEdge/

Day of action
“Close To The Edge”
One Night Group Show_Reopened

Sat, 07.12.2024, 15:00-19:00
Open discussion: 17:00-19:00

More than 2,500 people demonstrated against the announced cuts to Berlin’s cultural budget on Friday, November 29 from 3 pm. The bbk berlin and the network of independent Berlin project spaces and initiatives had called the demonstration. Many of the participating artists from “CLOSE TO THE EDGE” came directly to the opening of the ONE NIGHT GROUP SHOW after the demonstration. In this respect, the evening was marked by protest against the cuts to the cultural budget and the sad lessons to be learned from them. But it was also marked by joy and the conviction that our creative and solidary forces will not bow to this dictate. With this in mind, the ONE NIGHT GROUP SHOW will be repeated for the first time, i.e. it will be opened once again in the form of a day of action. In an open discussion round, there will also be the opportunity to express your own concerns, inform each other and think together about measures and activities.

Warm invitation to the opening of DEATH by Richard Najorka on Friday, January 24th 2025, 18:00–21:00

In DEATH, objects related to death, mourning, and remembering are being called into question regarding their materiality as well as their spatial and social contexts. DEATH is Richard Najorka’s first solo show. He studied at Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and lives in Berlin.

Open by appointment until February 21st, please contact: richardnajorka@outlook.de

Open on Kolonie Wedding weekend:
Friday, January 31: 19:00–21:00
Sunday, February 02: 14:00–17:00

A Beauty Odyssey brings together works in photography and film by three artists – Elina Brotherus, Marta Michalowska and Rosaliina Paavilainen. The exhibition includes two bodies of work by Elina and Marta made during their recent trip to Oman, where they photographed and performed in each other’s images set within monumental mountainous landscapes both awe-inspiring and troubling, alien and familiar, unmoved yet shaped by human cultures ancient and contemporary. While Rosaliina presents her simultaneously playful and unsettling short film that lends the exhibition its title – A Beauty Odyssey. Completed in 2024, the film looks at the brutality of beauty rituals violently shaping the body of the protagonist, performed by the artist, to freeze in time her youthful appearance.

Meet the artist Helena Nikonole in her current winter studio residency at Art Laboratory Berlin. In her talk, Helena will explore how artistic practices can challenge centralized systems of control through two of her current projects, which she is continuing to develop during her winter residency at Art Laboratory Berlin.

Sun, 2 February 2025
OPEN STUDIO: 2 – 6 pm
The artist will be present
TALK: 4 pm
No registration necessary
Free entrance

The first project uncovers hidden structures of power embedded in generative AI systems based on Large Language Models by probing their biases around political ideologies. This investigation reveals how these technologies reflect and amplify societal inequalities.

The second project, Guerrilla Wearables, decentralizes communication networks to counteract internet shutdowns and surveillance in high-risk environments. By leveraging LoRa technology and integrating it into wearable designs, this project offers both a practical and aesthetic response to censorship and restricted connectivity.

Together, these projects expose and challenge the mechanisms of centralized control, offering tools and insights for a more resilient, decentralized future. From revealing the biases in algorithms to building alternative communication infrastructures, the talk will demonstrate how art and technology intersect to resist and reimagine systems of power.

This event is part of the Winter Studio Residency 2025 at Art Laboratory Berlin.

More at: https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/events/hacking-networks/

Warm invitation to the opening of strangers with works by PETRA KARADIMAS + KAISU KOIVISTO

on Friday, February 28, 19:00 – 22:00 at Toolbox Finnish-German Art Space Berlin.

In their photographic works, Petra Karadimas and Kaisu Koivisto both observe a nature more out of sync than picturesque.

Karadimas focuses on nature in an urban setting, photographing buildings, anonymous structures and vegetation thriving side by side. Together, they form a web of visual and cultural references where nature often inhabits the spaces in between or inadvertently outgrows the spaces it has been allotted.

Koivisto, on the other hand, travels to the far north and its uninhabited landscapes, investigating processes of change. She captures landscapes that are no longer serene and untouched, yet remain unnervingly beautiful even in the face of looming ecological emergencies.

PETRA KARADIMAS (b. 1967, based in Berlin, Germany) photographs her everyday urban environment. Proceeding from details in her surroundings, she questions a perception based on seemingly incidental urban scenarios and examines fragments of nature and landscape in the spaces in-between the city. Building sites, wasteland and transitory spaces form a starting point for an investigation of urban codes and structures that meet and interact in an urban setting. www.karadimas.de

KAISU KOIVISTO (b.1962, based in Helsinki, Finland) works across photography, sculpture and installation. Her interests are deeply rooted in the North: its landscapes, political dimensions and the changes happening in them. In her ongoing photographic projects Conversations With Ice and Soft Ice Koivisto explores Arctic landscapes dominated by ice, sea and rocks. The presence and consequences of human activity is visible as an estranged landscape and mindscape. http://kaisukoivisto.com/

Exhibition March 1 – 22, 2025
Gallery hours Wed – Sat 15:00 – 19:00
Kolonie Weekend Sunday, March 1, 14:00 – 18:00

Visit Eva Duerden’s impressive installation, using familiar motifs in office carpets and night lights to create a nostalgic atmosphere and question traditions.

Eva Duerden – @eva.duerden (b. 1991, Bolton, UK, works and lives in Berlin) is a graduate of Central Saint Martins previously working in London and Co-founder of project space and Collective, 12ø, whose international project 30work30days engaged with thousands of artists from 40 countries. Previous exhibits include, ‘Another day, Another Archytype’ at Lewisham Art House (London), Resident at PIPE factory (Glasgow), ‘on plon air’ as part of Art Licks weekend (London) and ‘Nawki’, The Royal Standard (Liverpool). She has also been a guest lecturer for Liverpool John Moores University, and METAL and assisted curation at Focal Point Gallery (Southend). She has also worked with artist-led spaces and organisations across the UK to collaborate on best working practices.

Artist Statement:

Eva Duerden aims to create a perpetual feeling of novice-hood. The works employ symbols and aesthetics from memories, reamalgmating them to create novel approaches from the user/viewer, to create contradictions, double takes, and (mis)understandings. Fascinated by how we categorise and standardise objects, how they belong to hierarchies of value by mode, material, and context, determining their ‘correctness’, Eva aims to highlight the performativity that permeates these objects and, in turn, ourselves when we engage with them.

Friends of Kulturpalast,

At the end of February, we will say goodbye to the therapeutic blanket of snow that had settled over our rubbish-strewn Soldiner Kiez for a moment like a contemplative, cushioning down coat. Curtain up for a thematically similar double exhibition of a Finnish-Russian artist duo, because who would know better:

*Silence

Anton Laiko & Roberto Aarnio

Exhibition opening on Friday, February 28, 2025 at 8 p.m.

Exhibition duration: February 28 to March 8, 2025
Open: Sat & Sun from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and on request

Kulturpalast Wedding International
Freienwalder Strasse 20
13359 Berlin – Wedding
www.kulturpalastwedding.com

The Russian painter, sculptor and object- artist Anton Laiko, most recently represented in the nearby Toolbox Gallery with a collection of bottles labeled “Tears of Anton Laiko”, approaches with subversive poetry the question of how art comes into the world in today’s everyday life, which is characterized by a noisy, constant discourse:

“I am tired of social, political and anarchic art. Art must be concerned with form and content – be decorative. Like the art of the past and the future. We must free our own consciousness from social, political thinking and thinking about art and reach another level of consciousness by looking at pure reality. Silence is necessary for a person in the information noise of newspapers, mass media and everyday stress, so we, Anton Laiko and Roberto Aarnio, produce silence.”

These nuanced dimensions of silence are also the focus of Roberto Aarnio’s latest artistic exploration. The Finnish painter uses his own, extremely colorful dot and wobbly line technique to outline the mostly gray everyday life of Finnish people living alone. People look into refrigerators, sit alone at kitchen tables or in wheelchairs. In the process, motifs and form constantly dissolve – something vibrates – but nothing happens. In this contemplative form of everyday observation, despite the unconditional presence of the images, the unpainted, the absent or the silence comes to the fore:

„Silence is a choice, a deliberate act of restraint that can speak louder than words. It shields us from conflict, it creates distance, it can be the space where thoughts gather, where emotions settle, where clarity emerges.“

More at:

https://cargocollective.com/antonlaiko

https://www.instagram.com/robertoaarnio.art/

In quiet anticipation:

Kulturpalast Wedding Internationa

From the series “Our Neighbor Paints Too, and Much Better Than Us,” we present a long-overdue exhibition of works by our local hero painter, Younis Al Azzawy, on Friday. He has chosen his fellow artist and painter, Kareem Sadoon, also from Iraq, as artistic support for the exhibition. Two Contemporary Paintings at the Palace:

Younis Al Azzawy & Kareem Sadoon

Exhibition opening on Friday, April 25, 2025, at 8 p.m.

Exhibition runs from April 25 to April 27, 2025
Open Saturday and Sunday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and upon request

Kulturpalast Wedding International
Freienwalder Straße 20
13359 Berlin – Wedding
www.kulturpalastwedding.com
info@kulturpalastwedding.com

Painting to the max: Younis Al Azzawy is able to paint everything: the near, the far, and everything in between. S-Bahn stations, people standing around in local bars or forests, or new Van Gogh self-portraits. Nothing seems fixed or painted over; the motifs are in a constant state of dissolution, as if the painter, reluctant to continue elaborating, had recommended his paintings to simply continue painting themselves. It is this skillful painterly restraint that places Al Azzawy’s intense images in a shimmering state of suspension, allowing the various, consistently applied layers of paint to collide and take effect. The viewer finds themselves in the midst of a painterly process before a brilliant pictorial construction site, allowed to participate temporarily and mentally add everything that is absent.

The Sweden-based painter Kareem Sadoon is working on a differently complex resolution of image, paint application, and motif. In his mixed-media works, sculptural-looking figures, archaic-looking heads, and car-like pictograms encounter remnants of ornamentation, lines, and remnants of numbers and writing. Everything is interwoven through constant overpainting and obscuring. Kareem Sadoon’s pictures are reminiscent of an inadequately cleaned blackboard, on which the notes of the previous lessons shine through with each new application of chalk. This powerful all-over of information, combined with a simultaneous reduction to the essentials of the drawn line, makes the pages appear like archaic cartoons or a hard-to-decipher instruction manual for the entire world.

We look forward to this encounter of the simultaneous and the non-simultaneous, the not-yet and the no-longer, the Orient and the Occident, and everything else imaginable. A special thank you goes to our esteemed neighbor Younis Al Azzawy, who, in the 18 years of Kulturpalast Wedding International’s history, has never once complained about noise or nighttime disturbances. As the saying goes: “In Arabia, people are happy when their neighbors are celebrating a party. Then you know they’re healthy and still alive.”

That’s why things will be especially loud. Looking forward to it:

Kulturpalast Wedding International

Mythical Images – On Relevance of a Refuge

28.03.2025 – 20.04.2025

Myths have momentum in times of societal upheaval. The observer needs education and foreknowledge to have access to these visual worlds. The artists have to reinterpret and structure of myths again and again. Neither of these processes is quick. There is no one cannon. And the creative game with associations, parallels between ancient times and our modern world and references to current events make myths extremely interesting as a subject-matter. In the age of black-and-white painting, cancel culture, and minority-based quality assessments, mythical formations provide a certain way out of the misery of existence, help bridge times of uncertainty and carry messages for art enthusiasts for today and the future.

Showing works by: Tigran Tokmajyan (1923 – 2004), Edwin Dickman (1929-2023), Peter Hahlbrock (1934-2015), Gisela Breitling (1939-2018), Gisa Hausmann (1942-2015), Aude de Kerros (*1947), Thomas J.Richter (*1955), Oleg Neishtadt (*1962), Philipp Mager (*1966), Archi Galentz (*1971), Julia Katan (*1997) and others.

The presented works were created between 1958 and 2025: sketches, woodprints, lithographs, watercolors, oil paintings and AI-generated prints.

The exhibition in InteriorDAsein refers to the double exhibition “… through mythical zones” with works by Edwin Dickman (died in December 2023 at the age of 94) and Archi Galentz. This exhibition was held from 14.02. until 14.03.2025, shown in the producer gallery SpiritTransfer in Moers near Duisburg, the exhibition in InteriorDAsein expands the selection shown in Moers with more works.

Alfie Worrall
Sick
29 March – 4 April 2025 (open by appointment)
Opening: Friday 28 March, 18:00-22:00
Titled Sick, this solo show by Alfie Worrall depicts images of drudgery and despair. Figures hunched in exhaustion or pain and urban borderlands, are painted on canvas and scrawled on the walls of the gallery. Drawing from Berlin scenes, there is a familiarity that is imbued with a sense of sadness: a weeping willow, the blank gaze of windows in the dark, or a deserted gloomy canal.
Following on from Alfie’s ‘Ebay’ series of paintings, which explored discarded, neglected or unwanted objects (once cherished and now sold for market value), these are a broader emotive and figurative reflection on the values and violences of contemporary corrupt capitalistic societies.
Referring to French Realism, Goya’s Los Caprichos as well as Adolph Menzel’s depictions of 1800s Berlin, Alfie aims though this series to reach a personal language with which to describe the sadness and anger of living under today’s oppressive, exploitative and manipulative regimes that fail to look after their most vulnerable while consolidating power in a tiny elite.

alfieworrall.com
@__aelfraed__

Preview program 2025

Alex Tennigkeit, 28.06.-05.07.2025, Opening: Fr., 27.06.2025, 19:00
Christine Lohr, 27.09.-04.10.2025, Opening: Fr., 26.09.2025, 19:00
Tim Cierpiszewski, 01.-08.11.2025, Opening: Fr., 31.10.2025, 19:00
ONE NIGHT GROUP SHOW, 28.11.2025, 19:00

Photo: Alex Tennigkeit “The Animated Wall” 2023/24, oil on linen, 190 x 300 cm

Friday: 15.30 -18.30h

Saturday: 15.30-18.30h, 19h: Exhibition tour: Sylvia Henrich in dialog with the artist Bettina Cohnen

Sunday: Finissage of the exhibition 14-17h

Part of  EMOP

29 March 2025, 12 – 6 pm
Free entrance, donation recommended
Registration required
Please register at: https://pretix.eu/artlaboratoryberlin/politics-of-ai/

The hands-on workshop Politics of AI with artist and researcher Helena Nikonole explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, as well as text-to-image AI systems, reproduce biases and embed political ideologies. Participants will experiment with AI-generated responses to politically charged prompts, analyze biases in text-based AI outputs, and examine how these biases extend into AI-generated imagery. Through practical exercises, we will critically assess how AI models shape narratives, reinforce stereotypes, and amplify bias through a feedback loop.

Helena Nikonole will share her insights and artistic methodology, demonstrating how artistic research can serve as a critical tool for exposing and subverting AI biases. She will present her experiments based on the misuse of technology—intentionally pushing AI systems beyond their intended applications to reveal their ideological underpinnings and structural limitations. By creatively challenging these systems, participants will gain hands-on experience in both critical analysis and artistic experimentation, exploring how artistic interventions can uncover hidden biases and provoke discussions on AI ethics.

More information at: https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/events/politics-of-ai/

Arthur Kleinjan studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam and the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
He lives and works in Rotterdam. His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at The Essl Collection(Vienna, Austria), Western Front(Vancouver, Canada) and 2YK Gallery(Berlin, Germany). He has participated in exhibitions such as the Biennale of Busan (South Korea), in the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Canada), as well as exhibitions in France, Denmark, Spain, Italy, China and the USA.

In 2021 he won the Aesthetica Art Prize, UK

In Arthur Kleinjan’s video work and photography, a fascinating exploration of visual perception is merged with a metaphysical sensation of place, identity and time as he transforms apparent lucid moments into something complex and evocative.

Opening: Fri, 25.04.2025, 7 pm

Open on Kolononie Wedding weekend: Sun.: 27.04.2025 from 2–6 pm

25.4.-24.5.2025

opening hours: Wed-Sat 3-7 pm

Drawings and paintings

From Europe’s outskirts,

From the fringes of culture,

And from the edges of the mind.

The exhibiting artists are Alexei Gordin (EST), Anna Emilia Järvinen (FI), Jussi Kekkonen (FI) and Jussi Pyky (FI).

The exhibition has been supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

——-

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX

Koloniestraße 120

13359 Berlin-Wedding

U-Bahn Osloer Straße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen

On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Warm welcome to SPRING CLAMP

Mon 5.5.2025, doors 17:30

A sound filled evening with good times, performances by three Finnish groups Timate ynts, Blowjob and uRge as well as a sound sculpture by Araiké Da Silva that can be activated during the event.

Timate ynts is an improvised experimental group whose music is mostly based around synths, detuned guitars, field recordings and vocals. https://timateynts.bandcamp.com/

Blowjob is an experimental woodwind trio that plays minimalistic self-written and improvised music/sound-based pieces. Their style flirts with pop, renaissance and contemporary classical music, tied together with soft ambient drone aesthetic. The ensemble consists of a clarinet, a bass recorder and a bassoon.

uRge is a duo that explores the interfaces between performance and concert through playful and feminist lens by making visible hidden performative practices of music. They actively seek to dismantle masculine and essentializing notions of “pure music” associated with classical music as well as experimental electronic music. In practice, they work with techniques such as analogue sound synthesis, digital sound processing, experimental microphone techniques, acoustic instruments and text.

Doors 17.30

Further schedule to be announced

@Galerie Toolbox

Koloniestraße 120, Berlin Wedding

Free admission (pay what you can); the donations will go fully towards Gaza Champions. Facebook: https://www.championgaza.xyz/

Drawing for the poster made by Tuuli Sipilä.”

For half a decade, Montreal artist Morgan Legaré has been exploring the bilateral mechanisms between automation and control. As an industrial specialization, automation aims to increase profitability and ensure production quantity and quality through ever-advancing technologies. Consequently, control ensures the reliable operation of a structure or system.
The exhibition title, REINRAUM, is the German translation of “clean room.” This space is understood as a sterile and (over)controlled production environment aimed at minimizing the introduction, generation, and retention of all external elements. According to the artist, industrial and cultural environments share several similarities. Spaces dedicated to contemporary art seem increasingly sterilized for exploration and experimentation. Creative power is influenced by the authority of machines that produce and disseminate art in absolute sterility, whose gears are activated by artists, curators, and cultural workers, increasingly overwhelmed by chains of responsibility.
The current project is mechanically transposed into the former manufacturing district of Gesundbrunnen in Berlin (Germany), where ROSALUX is located. Today, entirely sterilized, coated in white on each of its surfaces, and illuminated by austere neon lights, the place stands out as a “white cube” distinct from its vernacular habitat. From place to place, the artist reuses extruded aluminum profiles to build a room within a room: a mise en abyme of a white cube within a clean room. The structure erected in the center of the gallery operates as a portal to interrelated interstices: from inside to outside, from unstable to graspable, from imperceptible to visible. Through modeled plans with illusionistic effects arranged on a support specific to architects’ plans, a sort of material stimulus, Legaré alters the perception of Berlin visitors through sleight of hand.
The works printed during a research-creation residency at SAGAMIE in Alma (Quebec, Canada) constitute the central element of REINRAUM. It is an accumulation of schematics of recognized Montreal exhibition halls. The images materialize the anticipation of a visual experience: recognizing archetypes of production and diffusion of the cultural industry. They reveal themselves as fixed animations tinted with Prussian blue that activate when our bodies move around the circular device.
Morgan Legaré’s approach becomes increasingly precise without becoming disembodied. The artist’s empirical and technical know-how are automated and controlled by himself. The current body of work de-reconstructs conditioning. It is fabricated both by the artist’s hands in his studio and on his screen, within the white cube itself.

With the support of the Québec Government Office in Germany

The artist:
A native of Trois-Rivières (Quebec, Canada), Morgan Legaré lives and works in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). His practice oscillates between installation and media art. Represented in the Majudia and Ubisoft Montréal collections, as well as several other private collections in Quebec. His work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Fais-moi l’art (2024) in Montreal, curated by Laurent Vernet, at ELEKTRA gallery (2023) in Montreal, at ARTCH (2022) in Montreal and at L’Œil de Poisson (2022) in Quebec City (Quebec, Canada), curated by Jean-Michel Quirion.

The curator:
Jean-Michel Quirion, Master of Museology, Université du Québec en Outaouais (2020), Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. Co-General Manager, Programming at Centre d’art et de diffusion CLARK in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). As an author, he contributes to specialized magazines such as Ciel variable, ESPACE art actuel, Esse arts + opinions, Inter art actuel and Vie des arts. His curatorial projects have been shown at Galerie UQO (2018) and AXENÉO7 (2023) in Gatineau, Carleton University Art Gallery (2022) in Ottawa (Ontario, Canada), DRAC – Art actuel (2022) in Drummondville (Québec, Canada) and L’Œil de Poisson (2022) in Québec City (Québec, Canada).

https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/exhibitions/fermenting-textiles/
Fermenting Textiles is a unique inter and trans-disciplinary research and exhibition project that puts active matter at the center: it connects anthropology, microbiology, and art through the engagement of artisans, anthropologists, scientists, and artists, as well as more-than-human actors. Fermenting Textiles explores the fermentation of textile in mud and plant material to produce complex dyeing for various use – from traditional hunter shirts in Burkina Faso to kimono silk dyeing in Japan. In each case the process is artisanal and has fascinating traditional uses and meanings. Both cases make use of natural chemical and biological processes to create unique aesthetic and medicinal results.

Cross-cultural research methods also play a key role in Fermenting Textiles. Anthropologist Laurence Douny has worked with colleagues and dyers in Burkina Faso to meticulously document the long Vouwo mud dyeing process, which involves soil of different origins, iron ore, and various plant materials. Microbiologist Regine Hengge and her PhD student José I. Hernández Lobato have studied the complex interactions of soil bacteria with plants and fabrics in the dyeing process and visually re-enact these in the exhibition. Furthermore, Hengge reaches across fields by photographically creating patterns that combine images of bacterial biofilms from this scientific research and of the West African textiles studied by Douny. These have been printed on fabrics for making new shirts, thus completing a transdisciplinary journey from “shirt to shirt”.

The art and design project Craft Portrait: Dorozome by Pauline Agustoni and Satomi Minoshima explores fabric dyeing by artisans in the southern Japanese island of Amami Oshima. Traditionally, silk threads for kimono production, interwoven with cotton threads which are later removed to reveal undyed portions of textile, are initially dyed in a liquid bath of tree bark, before being repeatedly dipped in mud. This causes chemical reactions of complexation and oxidation, which create rich dark brown and black silks. While working with the artisans in Japan, Agustoni and Minoshima have also produced a textile sculpture of pink-brown and black strands, that twist and turn, emulating the act of wringing, an essential part of the dyeing process.

By combining these approaches, methods, and contexts, Fermenting Textiles stresses the agency and sentience of matter in the fermentation process and its versatile materiality. Speaking through the lens of Posthuman philosophy, matter actively performs, what philosopher Karen Barad describes as “a materialist, naturalist, and posthumanist elaboration – that allows matter its due as an active participant in the world’s becoming, in its ongoing ‘intra-activity’” (Barad 2003: 803). The unique multi-national, multi- and trans-disciplinary cooperation that makes up the group exhibition Fermenting Textiles mirrors the multi-species collaborations that are integral to the mud dyeing process.

Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz

Related Literature

Douny, L., Hernández Lobato, J.I., Séré, A., Sawadogo, S. and Hengge, R. (2023). The hunter shirt: the role of Acacia nilotica in fermentative textile dyeing. Acta Hortic. 1361, 67-76, DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2023.1361.8.

Douny, L., Hengge, R., Hernández Lóbato, J.I., Rapp, R. & de Lutz, C (2025) Fermenting Textiles: the Hunter Shirt. In: Final publication of the Excellence Cluster Matters of Activity (in preparation; to be published by Birkhäuser).

More information:
https://www.matters-of-activity.de/en/posts/16004/fermenting-textiles
https://www.matters-of-activity.de/en/research/projects/55/weaving
https://www.matters-of-activity.de/en/

The project Fermenting Textiles is part of the Matters of Activity, Image Space Material Cluster of Excellence, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. It also takes part in the Excellence Cluster __matter FESTIVAL 2025, Matters of Activity, Image Space Material Cluster of Excellence, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and is part of the Berlin Design Week 2025.

Adama Séré is a Marka-Dafing master dyer, traditional healer, and head of the Hunters Association Batônôtiban of the Mouhoun region of Burkina Faso. Native of the village of Safané, he inherited the craft of dyeing hunting garments with medicinal plants and mud known as vouwo for domestic and ceremonial usages from his father, Passourou Séré. With over 50 years of experience in dyeing textiles, Adama has collaborated on the ‘Hunter shirt’ project with researchers at the Excellence cluster ‘Matters of Activity. Image Space Material’, at Humboldt University, Berlin. In this transdisciplinary venture, Adama conducted a series of in-the-field craft experiments using various mud dye recipes he applied to cotton fabrics to explore color-making while also demonstrating the sustainable dimension of his art.

Dr. Laurence Douny is a research associate at the Excellence cluster Matters of Activity. Image Space Material at Humboldt University Berlin, working on textiles making in West Africa in the lens of an anthropology of materials, techniques and environments. Using a fieldwork-based and multi-species approach, she investigates the material and cultural properties of wild silk fabrics and their substitutes through complex fermentative dyeing techniques. Her research on Fermented Textiles highlights centuries-old craft of fiber enhancement within the context of sustainability, achieved through collaborations with artisans, microbiologists and material scientists. Douny is a member of the steering committee of ArtBioMatters (ABM) (NYU/The Met) and a research member of the project WILDSILKS, funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). She has recently accomplished, with Marka-Dafing artisans of Burkina Faso, the documentation of wild silk’s production funded by the Endangered Material Knowledge Program (EMKP)/Arcadia Fund at The British Museum.

Prof. Dr. Regine Hengge, Professor of Microbiology at Humboldt University Berlin, pioneered research on how bacteria survive harsh stress conditions, with a focus on molecular signaling and regulation and the complex architecture and morphogenesis of bacterial biofilms. In the Excellence Cluster Matters of Activity, she explores the fabrics and forms of life at the interfaces of science and art. Her projects range from bacterial cellulose as a self-growing living material for design to fermentative textile dyeing and visual re-enactments of plant-microbe interactions in art projects. Based on combined anthropological, historical and molecular microbiological studies of traditional medicinal and craft practices, she has developed the concept of human-curated multi-species interactions as a basis for more sustainable technology. For her scientific research she received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant. She is an elected member of Leopoldina, EMBO and other scientific academies.

Pauline Agustoni is a Swiss artist and designer. At the intersection of conceptual design and art, her work explores the poetry of encounters between materials, techniques, and gestures of making. Since her graduation from Design Academy Eindhoven, she explores how intertwined we are with the goods we shape, and how they shape us in return. By immersing herself in production spaces and processes, she places moments of exchange—with people and with materials—at the core of her practice. Through her projects, be them installations, publications or object series, she encourages a heightened awareness of the gestures and techniques that shape our material world. Her experience ranges from the collaborative project Craft Portrait, a ceramics residency at EKWC, freelance work for designer Hella Jongerius, and exhibitions at Swiss Design Awards in Basel, Atelier MUJI Ginza in Tokyo and Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.

Satomi Minoshima is a Japanese designer driven by a passion for exploring the possibilities of different materials and colors. She seeks to understand the singular context surrounding specific colors and materials leading to a new interpretation and perspective of their creation process. By always honoring the tangibility of the object, Minoshima’s design approach combines material-based research and a genuine and poetic narrative to bring her concepts to life. She holds degrees from Musashino Art University in Tokyo (2014) and Design Academy Eindhoven (2019) and has exhibited her work internationally. Currently based in the Netherlands, she was recognized with Raising Talent Awards Japan from Maison & Objet in 2022.

Acknowledgements in books today very often begin with sentences such as: ‘Many people were involved in the creation of this book.’ – indicating that public discourse is slowly moving away from the modern myth of the self-sufficient genius in the closet. People are social and political beings; all technology, art, all knowledge is always based on that of the past and expands and changes in communities. In our lives, we are all embedded in networks: many relationships with many people. The couple relationship is one of the closest, most intimate; in many couples, the partner is the person we spend the most time with. Perhaps the intimacy of the couple relationship is as much a myth as the lonely genius, or at least a cliché; in terms of intimate interpersonal relationships, too, there is currently a shift towards more open, diverse forms of cohabitation. Nevertheless, there are still couples, and with regard to the creation of works of art, to creativity, it is perhaps worth taking a look at possible mutual influence, mutual inspiration in couple relationships.
We have invited colleagues close to the gallery whose work we value and who we think are worth entering into a dialogue with.

Artists:

Maija Helasvuo’s work deals with the sculptural formulation of the vague, the fleeting, helplessness and other elusive phenomena, often in contrast to the massiveness of the material or the roughness of the processing. The artist works with visual metaphors that can refer to art history and social interaction at the same time. Together with Mika Karhu and other Finnish artists, she has been running the Finnish-German art space Toolbox since 2012, a project that promotes artistic exchange between Finland and Germany.
Maija Helasvuo, born in 1968 in Karelia, studied art at the Hyvinkää Art Schook, the Lahti Institute of Fine Art and the Turku Fine Art Academy.

Henrik Jacob kneads black and white modelling clay over photos, allowing the motifs to grow into the space. The size of his thumbprint determines the pixel size, which gives the images an unsettling blurriness. By allowing the malleable, plastic material to change even after a work has been completed, the artist is working on a kind of anti-art history that questions the significance of the final artistic product. In the exhibition, he presents smaller pictures as well as the folded SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) election campaign booth that he set up in Soldiner Kiez in Berlin shortly before the 2025 Bundestag elections. (Sibylle Peter Dieter)
Henrik Jacob, born 1972 in Dresden, studied fine art at the University of the Arts Bremen under Prof Rolf Thiele from 1994 to 2000. After stays abroad at the Winchester School of Art, Barcelona/Spain and at the Academie Galan/France, he became a master student of Rolf Thiele at the HfK Bremen in 2001. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 2000, where he has organised and curated the exhibition and project space Kulturpalast Wedding International since 2007. In 2016, the project space was honoured by the Berlin Senate with the award for artistic project spaces and initiatives.

In his art, Mika Karhu deals with human emotions – psychological phenomena – in connection with social structures, power and power relations, based on many years of studies in psychology, neurology, philosophy and political theory. A particular focus is on trauma, fear and vulnerability. In his gloomy ink paintings in shades of grey, black and white, the dark represents violence, depression, terror and what we (cannot) talk about; the light represents knowledge and hope.
Mika Karhu, born in 1969 in Joensuu, Karelia, Finland, studied fine arts and graphic arts at the North Karelia College of Art and Design, at the Institute of Printmaking at Lahti University, at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and received his doctorate in fine arts at Aalto University in Helsinki, where he now teaches art.

Susan Kempfer often uses found stones for her sculptures. Stones are an ancient raw material of human culture for the construction of buildings, the manufacture of cult objects, weapons and utensils. The weathering and erosion of rocks by wind, water, or ice, the dissolution, transport and subsequent deposition of their components, biochemically induced precipitation or evaporation or magmatic stone melting result in a wide variety of shapes and colours. The visible history of the stones is continued artistically by Susam Kempfer: the body of the naturally formed stone is sculpted and sculpturally transformed into a living, artistic object with a new face.
Susan Kempfer, born 1969 in Grimma, has been involved in painting for many years and studied sculpture / sculpture / installation at the Hochschule der bildenden Künste Essen. Since 2018 she has been a course instructor for drawing and sculptural design in public and private settings.

Jörn Kempfer is a painter and sculptor. Figurative and non-representational are the poles between which his painting moves. His painting is always concerned with the essential, i.e. the reality of the image. At the same time, for him the essence of the pictorial is mysteriously not something concrete, but abstraction, as in music, in which there is no tangible content. For Kempfer, reality has nothing to do with visual appearance.
Jörn Kempfer, born in 1958 in Duisburg–Homberg, grew up in Moers, studied painting at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1981–1986.
 Since then he has worked as a freelance painter and since 1994 also as a sculptor. He is a lecturer in adult education and artistic director of the Moers Summer Academy for Painting and Sculpture. Lecturer at the Scula di scultura di Peccia, Ticino, Switzerland and member of the BBK Berlin and the Kunstverein Duisburg, he lives alternately in Moers and Berlin

In 2024, Line Wasner has realised a performance together with Maarja Nurk in the allotment garden area Bornholm in Berlin. The two artists dressed up as bushes and did gardening work. For all those who couldn’t be there at the time, in the exhibition will be shown some film footage of this memorable performance. The very impressive bush costumes will be on display together with some of Line Wasner’s paintings.
Line Wasner paints and draws matters that don’t show much interest in notions of order and economy. The painting thus lurches idiosyncratically; in the diffuse, a clear image of something unclear emerges. Through sewing, folding, stuffing and appliqué, Line lately liberates her paintings from two dimensionality and releases them into space.
Line Wasner, born 1977, lives and works in Berlin. She studied Fine Arts and Environmental Art at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Glasgow School of Art. Since 2010 she also works as a scenic painter.

Dear friends, Dear lovers of the Beautiful, People of good and evil Will, Ladies and Gentlemen, Children and Teenagers, Pensioners and Unemployed, Patrons and all who wish:
We hereby invite you to the opening of an unusual exhibition SLANTED GROVE of a mysterious and extraordinary British artist LUMEN THE SCRIBE

The artist will be present in person and may lift the veil of secrecy surrounding him.

Opening 30.05. from 18:00

LUMEN THE SCRIBE
SLANTED GROVE

The slanted grove is three years gone by lost in the endless midst of escaped time in shades of green. The cartridge awaits only the player’s dreamless hopes.

Introducing LUMEN THE SCRIBE:

I THE SCRIBE, A BARD OF AGELESS ERA, THE COVENANT OF HISTORICITY.
Do SOLEMLY SWEAR TO SCULPT IN TIMELESS
THREADS THE FORM OF THE GREAT BUT DOOMED
„WORLD WIDE WEB“
HERE I CRAFT A PRIORI A TALE OF GOLDEN THREAD
THAT LEADS LIGHT FOREVER
PROM THE MAZE OF NEGATION

Warmly welcome to our next opening on Friday, 26. September 2025, at 7 pm

Exhibition: 26.9.–25.10.2025

Opening hours: Wed–Sat 3–7 pm

Kolonie Wedding Weekend open on Sunday, 28.9.2025 from 2–6 pm

Videoworks by students of Aalto University Film Department, Helsinki, Finland

Featuring artists

Joona Ikonen, Mika Koskinen, Julia Matinniemi, Sanna Langinkoski and Joonas Veijanen

“Dünne Räume / Thin Rooms” -exhibition dives into the space between the physical and the spiritual worlds, where our present experiences blend with memories and the past that lingers in the space. The works explore memories, spirituality, and individual experiences in a diverse and open-minded manner. The works challenge the viewer to explore the moment we live in and to reflect on the meaning of presence in that thin space that separates the past from the future.
The exhibition is part of the Associative Visual Storytelling course for Master students in the Film and Animation department at Aalto University (Finland). The course is led, and the exhibition is organized by visual artist and university pedagogue Mika Karhu.

Joona Ikonen
Memory Lan, short film, 5 min

History echoes through the corridors of the present, even if we refuse to hear it. The work compels the viewer to confront the unsettling rhymes of our time. Are you complicit?

Mika Koskinen
Muodollinen lounas / Formal lunch, animation, 2 min

Formal lunch refers to Eucharist and rituals. Life appears often as a sequence of absurd events. In the end, is it the religion which can save us?

Julia Matinniemi
Villa Pfaffenlehne, documentary, 15 min

Jan, Julia and Silke make a final visit to Villa Pfaffenlehne, a run down garden cottage in the outskirts of Erfurt owned by the latter’s mother and others Oma.

Joonas Veijanen
Varjostus / Shadowing, video+audio, 2 min 25 sec

Step into the light (of the projector).
By entering the picture you cut a hole into the image.
But don’t worry. You’re casting a shadow.

Sanna Langinkoski
Time traveler, visual artwork, paper & textile

“In family photos from 80 years ago, I saw a woman who looked strikingly familiar. She looked just like me.”
The work builds a bridge between the past and the present, while also reflecting on the layers of memory, connections between generations, and the fleeting presence of history. It is a personal journey through time, in which the photographs create a connection to a person whose life has already ended, but whose familiar gaze lives on in the photographs. One day, I too will be a past figure in a photograph.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloer Straße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

The Vernissage is on 27th of June on 7 p.m.

An Introduce to exhibition and presentation of artist by Urszula Usakowska-Wolff

Welcome to the opening at Toolbox Finnish-German Art space on Frday 27.6.2025 at 7 pm

Artists:

Teemu Saukkonen: Moments of Life

Ulrika Segerberg: Collapse – special guest: matka

Exhibition: 27.06.–19.07.2025
Closing event: 19.07.2025 at 4:30–6 pm

Opening hours: Wed–Sat: 3–7 pm

More about the artists:

https://www.saukkonenteemu.fi

https://www.ulrikasegerberg.net/

---

Temu Saukkonen

KURZÜBERBLICK ÜBER DIE LEITMOTIVE DER “Moments of Life ” AUSSTELLUNG

Der Inhalt der Gemälde steht in seiner tieferen Bedeutung auf Messers Schneide“, denn die von Menschen verarbeiteten Tiere stehen nicht nur für Leiden und das Ende des Lebens, sondern auch für ihre Bedeutung als Nahrungsmittel. Die Kreaturen in Saukkonens Werken symbolisieren Verlassenheit und Unschuld, aber auch menschliche Macht und Entfremdung von der Natur.

Der kompromisslose Realismus und die geraden Pinselstriche in den Gemälden vermitteln eine geheimnisvolle Bedrohung – aber auch Hoffnung. Durch die sensible Beherrschung der Farben werden die Tiere fast „lebendig“ dargestellt, und ihre proportional überdimensionale Größe wird als Anreiz genutzt, um Respekt vor jedem Lebewesen zu zeigen. Die (sur)rationale Tragödie, die dargestellt wird, ist Mitgefühl – in allen ausgestellten Kunstwerken mit schwarzem Humor gespickt.

Die Besucher:innen müssen jedoch selbst entscheiden, wie sie die Erzählungen der Gemälde in der Ausstellung „Momente des Lebens“ vervollständigen.

Artwork: Teemu Saukkonen Sucking Pig, 2025, oil and acrylic on canvas, 155 x 200 cm

 

Ulrika Segerberg

Collapse – special guest: matka

Ulrika Segerberg: Still from Collapse

Time scatters. We run — but do we hide? Tick tack, the roof is cracking, covering our fur with paledust. Tick tack — how do we react when what we used to know takes on a different shape, oreven falls apart? From whom do we run? We do fly, sometimes. Do we dance alone, or go to sleep with a kiss on our cheek?

Since 2016, Ulrika Segerberg and Martin Kleinmichel have collaborated under the name matka, gradually shaping their debut album — each song accompanied by a video. The installation at Toolbox features their latest track Collapse, along with paintings and sculptural props used in the video. Frame by frame, the lens captures a search — not for narrative or meaning, but perhaps for those fleeting, quiet moments that comfort us when no one is watching. Martin composed the music and edited the video. Ulrika wrote the lyrics, contributed the hookline, and sang.

Ulrika Segerberg (b. 1976, Sweden) is a Berlin-based artist working with painting, sculpture,
video, performance, and music. Drawing from mythology, folklore, and pop culture, her
installations combine materials such as ceramics, textiles, sound, and text, moving between
figuration and abstraction. Her work has been shown at Västerås Konstmuseum, Deutscher
Künstlerbund, LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Dorich House Museum, and others. She is represented in collections including the Swedish Arts Council and Malmö Konstmuseum.

CV Ulrika Segerberg (Download PDF)

The only good solution is a quick fix. A simple way out that costs us nothing. The pill that would cure everything. Fortunately, there are still artists in this black and white world. Those who dedicate themselves to painting and shaping the world they live in or would rather live in. Those who add beauty and meaning. Those who provoke thought or evoke emotion. Those that give real comfort. New meanings. New solutions. A pill that cures everything. For everyone to take. Twice a day with a little water.

With Karin Arink * Khaddouj Barghout * Vince Blok * VandeCamp&Heesterbeek * Tiny Domingos * Karen Foss * André Geertse * Dale Grant * Lucia Kempkes * Lisetteh * Franz Licht * Frauke van Lierop * Azar Pajuhandeh * Tanja Ritterbex * Erica Scheper * Izaak Slagt * Joran van Soest * Stinkhond aka Paul Brouwer * Witte Wartena * Anne Wölk * Esmee van Zeeventer & Wendy Hanlon

Curated by Jacqueline Grubben
Organised by Debsaysyes and Stinkhond

Screen Memories – Inner Landscapes

5.06.2025 – 6.07.2025

Group show of Maria Arendt, Dragana Latinović and Tatjana Strugar

Opening: Thursday 5th of June 2025, starting 19:00. Artists are present
Duration: till 6th of July.

Open by appointment and during Kolonie Wedding June weekend openings: on Friday 27th of June from 18.00 to 22.00, on Saturday 28th of June from 14.00 to 18.00 and on Sunday 29th of June from 14:00 to 20:00

Periods of cultural and political uncertainty often lead to an inward turn. In the absence of coherent collective narratives, artists turn to personal memory, emotional perception, and visual archetypes as a way to construct meaning. Screen Memories – Inner Landscapes brings together three women artists of Slavic origin — Maria Arendt, Dragana Latinović, and Tatjana Strugar — whose works unfold in the space between subjective recollection and abstract form.

Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s idea of “screen memories” — altered recollections that hide deeper, often painful experiences — these artists create works that capture emotionally charged, dreamlike images. Their art doesn’t just depict the past; it shows how memories are felt and reshaped.

Each artist has a unique style. Maria Arendt’s sensuous works emphasize breath and calm. Dragana Latinović creates delicate, poetic spaces where nature, the body, and light intertwine. Tatjana Strugar explores personal and cultural trauma through layered, emotional pieces centered on feminine experiences.

The exhibition features paintings, drawings, and mixed media works created between 2019 and 2025. Rather than telling straightforward stories, Screen Memories – Inner Landscapes offers a space where dreams, reality, bodies, and landscapes blur. Viewers are invited to linger, feel, and reflect.

Maria Arendt is an active contemporary artist. She is particularly inspired by Indian embroidery and works with textiles. She studied iconography as well and experimented in the fields of graphic art, illustration, and collage.

The artist was born in 1968 in Moscow, USSR and lives in Berlin. Since her childhood, she has been influenced by her artistic surroundings; her grandmother, Ariadna Arendt, was a famous animalist sculptor. Until the age of 17, Maria lived in the “Artists’ Village” on Maslovka Street in Moscow. And at the age of 6, she first participated in an appartment exhibition of Moscow avant-garde artists. Since 1989, after graduation from Moscow College of Industrial and Applied Arts, she has participated in more than 100 exhibitions in numerous countries.

Her artworks are part of the collections of the Russian Museum, State Tretyakov Gallery, Shchusev Museum of Architecture, Garage, Moscow, Museum of Modern Art, and in numerous private collections. 2012 Maria Arendt took part at the Kosmos as Presence – V5 – art convention at InteriorDAsein (see: http://www.interiordasein.de/ausstellungen/qv5q-kosmos-art-convent )

Dragana Latinović is a multidisciplinary artist born in Kikinda, Serbia and based now in Berlin. Her work spans visual arts, documentary filmmaking, and multimedia installations. Her artistic journey is deeply rooted in exploring the interconnectedness of all life forms and the existential essence of human experience.

Beyond her artistic creations, Latinović is actively involved in social activism, education, and collaborations with scientific institutions like Johns Hopkins University and the University of Bristol. Her work often intersects with cognitive sciences, aiming to bridge art and scientific understanding. She explores the relationship between the individual and the collective, often through emotionally layered visual storytelling. Trained in graphic art at the Academy of Fine Art  Novi Sad and film directing at HfbK in Hamburg, she co-founded Clear Cut Films Documentary to develop human-centered nonfiction projects. Her short film Brothers’ Dance became a cult classic in the former Yugoslavia, and her recent documentary Colors in My Eye was selected for the Beldocs Pitching Forum, MakeCoProDox, and Dok.Forum München.

Alongside her visual art and filmmaking, she curates exhibitions and coordinates film events. One of her recent curatorial projects is a VR exhibition by Serbian visually impaired artist Jelena Jakonić. The work simulates Jelena’s unique visual perceptionv — seeing colors without defined shapes — which is not a common experience among visually impaired people.  

Tatjana Strugar, a UK-based visual artist with a background in fine arts and film costume design. Born 1966 in Belgrade, lived in Switzerland, France, USA and Serbia. Her work exhibited across the UK, Serbia, Croatia, and Brazil.

Her debut solo exhibition Positions (2004) featured “The Loop” – a pioneering permanent installation and the first ramp in a Belgrade gallery to enhance accessibility for mobility-challenged visitors. It set the base for her work- exploring the interplay of art, society, and politics.In her works a recurring motif appears: the sky viewed through branched treetops, a vision sparked by a euphoric romance  of spring 2005. As that initial charm faded, sketches morphed into nightmarish abstractions, mirroring the tangled interplay between the idealism of art and the messy realities of everyday politics. Through persistent reworking, she fought to preserve the vividness, color, and innocence of that fleeting moment, much like one clings to hope amid societal power struggles, systemic misogyny, or political upheaval. While attending psychoanalysis,  this imagery reflected in Freud’s “screen memories”—benign shields guarding her from personal and collective traumas, from her childhood in a dissolving Yugoslavia, end of her marriage, experinece of motherhood, sexual abuse… the branches went on…

Screen Memories – Inner Landscapes group exhibition finds a fitting home at InteriorDAsein, a space run by Archi Galentz, where careful presentation meets craftsmanship. The exhibition’s focus on memory, perception, and emotional resonance aligns with the space’s commitment to thoughtful framing and intimate engagement. Here, the boundary between workshop and exhibition dissolves — making InteriorDAsein not just a venue, but an active participant in the transmission of artistic meaning.

Closing event of Screen Memories – Inner Landscapes is on Sunday, 6th of July, starting 18.00

Welcome to our opening on Friday, 25. July 2025, 7 pm

Artists:

Peter Hock (Berlin) and Mika Karhu (Finland)

Exhibition: 26.07.–23.08.2025

Opening hours: Mit–Sat 3–7 pm

The Compulsion to Name and Art’s Resistance: On the Difficulty of Viewing Peter Hock’s (b. 1962) charcoal drawings

Art challenges us in a way we are not always willing to admit: it forces us to dwell in uncertainty, discomfort, without the protection of conceptual frameworks. This challenge is vividly embodied in Hock’s art, where the experience of viewing his work becomes a site of tension. The viewer wants to name—but cannot. Hock’s pieces offer no clear categories, no space for simple classification or interpretation. They move along the boundary between the recognizable and the unrecognizable, from one form to another, from the natural to the alien. This refusal of unambiguousness is not an obstacle to understanding, but rather its condition: it is precisely the indeterminacy that opens the possibility for a deeper experience.

Our culture is deeply rooted in the power of naming. By naming things, we define them, organize them, give them a manageable form. Naming brings a sense of safety—it is a human way of keeping chaos at bay. But at the same time, naming can also exclude, reduce, and flatten. When art, like Hock’s work, resists naming, it not only irritates the viewer but also reveals something fundamental about ourselves: our desire to control what we do not understand.

This insight into the double nature of naming—as a source of safety and simultaneously a form of limitation—raises a profound philosophical question: to what extent is understanding based on appropriation, and to what extent on the willingness to remain open to what exceeds language? Naming involves power. When we name, we draw a boundary—on this side lies the known and controlled, on the other the foreign, the undefined, perhaps even the threatening. The unnamed is left without a place in our shared system, and for that reason it unsettles us.

An artwork that refuses to be explained challenges this order. It does not provide a ready-made framework of interpretation but forces the viewer to tolerate ambiguity. This kind of ambiguity cannot be resolved by intellectual effort; instead, it must be inhabited. One must look without understanding—listen without immediately translating what is heard into words. This experience can even be therapeutic, as it dismantles the modern mind’s compulsion for control.

Mika Karhu

The world stutters.

It is full of opposing opinions that contradict the facts of the world. Instead of facts, people talk about values and imagine that values themselves become facts if one just wishes, believes, and wants hard enough.

The world stutters.
It cries out for the help of intellect, but that voice is silenced—into the cavities of silence and stupidity, hidden among cobwebs. The hair follicles of foolishness ooze with the defiance of word-bodies resting on beliefs. Beliefs whose destructive energy and burning pain points are stale clichés about politics, race, economy, art, and sexuality.

Double standards build mental architectures through which people navigate their social world. They shape their actions according to habits of prejudice and routine assumptions. So human—and as Nietzsche said, “there is too much human in man.”

What is hypocrisy, where an individual or group publicly presents certain moral values or principles, yet acts in direct contradiction to them? Why does someone preach strict morality, yet behave immorally themselves—or demand behavior from others that they do not follow in politics, religion, or everyday life?

Why do people set public moral standards but follow them only when it benefits or serves their interests? Why do individuals feel pressure to conform to certain moral norms outwardly, even if they don’t personally believe in them or want to follow them?

Why might a person be unaware of their own contradictory behavior, or try to justify it to themselves through various rationalizations? Why are certain moral values so deeply embedded in communities or cultures that they are maintained externally, even if individuals do not find them personally meaningful?

Why is hypocrisy used as a means to maintain power or control over others, even though such behavior ultimately serves only self-interest?
And why does hypocrisy erode trust and credibility, causing conflict and distrust between individuals and groups?

No wonder the world stutters.

——

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloer Straße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Jewgenija Tschuikowa is a russian-german artist, coming in the third generation from the famous artist family Chuikov. Grandfather Semjon Chuikov and grandmother Evgeniya Maleina, Soviet realistic painters, father Ivan Chuikov – postmodern conceptualist painter and mother Galina Malik – a theatre fashion artist and ceramic sculptor . She studied in the Print Academy in Moscow and graduated in Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Working with the very unusual materials like dust, glitter, lipstick, ashes and others she developes a symbilic abstract narratives which redefine the idea of painting as an extremely personal and at the same time universal existential metaphor.

Jewgenija Tschuikowa
lives and works in Düsseldorf
1972 born in Moscow, Russia
1989–1990 Study at Polygraphic Institute, Moscow, Russia
1990–1997 Study at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Class Prof. Christian Megert, Germany
1994 Guest-Student at Winchester School of Art, Class John Gibbons, UK
1994 Meisterschülerin of Prof. Christian Megert
1993 Hedwig und Robert Samuel-Stiftung Price, Düsseldorf, Germany
2011 Founding of Art Laboraty „Kinderkunstlabor Düsseldorf“
for children and youth in Düsseldorf
2016 curator work for KIT Düsseldorf. The exhibition „Nach Glamour”
Since 2018 gives Kinderkunstlabor workshops in primary schools of Düsseldorf

Solo Exhibitions:
2025 Bas-cs galerie Berlin
2025 »8 März«, Tesla StoreDüsseldorf
2024 »Tracing Love«, Dialograum an St. Helena, Bonn
2011 »Quick Dry«, Aidan Gallery, Vinzavod, Moscow (Catalogue)
2006 »Purple Triumph«, Aidan Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2002 »Künstlich«, with T. Majevszky und Frank N, Gallery PIN, Bielefeld, Germany
2002 »Neubewertung«, with T. Majevszky, M°A°I°S – 3: »1:1«, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin
2001 »Wsyo wysche i wysche«, Colour-Space-Installation at »Meganom«, Moscow,Russia
1997 »Unter 80«, Installation at »Künstlerinnen II«, with H. Fescharek,
W1, Bayer AG, Leverkusen, Germany
1998 »Fenster« at »Künstlerinnen II«, mit H. Fescharek,
Feierabendhaus der Bayer AG, Dormagen, Germany (Catalogue)
1994 »Über Gelb, Rot und Blau«, Colour-Space-Installation,
Gallery Laden 33, Düsseldorf (Catalogue)
1993 »Das geheime Zimmer (The Secret Room)«, Colour-Space-Installation in Empty Building, Bonn, Germany
»Untitled«, Installation, Gallery Laden 33, Düsseldorf, Germany

How incomplete is our own perspective? How determined by others do we see? And are we more than intersections of our own and the other?

Four young South Korean artists approach the subjective view of the "I as witness," rewriting and rewriting it, searching for traces of the other. Four contemporary works from Korea – presented by the artist collective Pink Factory and realized in Berlin's Wedding district.

Pink Factory is a self-organized art space for unconventional artistic positions that explore landscape, nature, and the conditions of artistic work. It is located in a rural area just outside the capital city of Seoul. This exhibition is the second collaboration between Kulturpalast Wedding and Pink Factory.

“Muster entwirren / Untangling Patterns” is a project by Mihkel Muskar Galerie, taking place from August 7 to November 10, 2025, during its residency at BAS CS Gallery as part of Kolonie Wedding.
The project features the following artists:
Alina Pak
Galya Lutzky
blaxx443
Olga Survillo
Elya May Myau
Marina Koldobskaya
Cornelia Gross
In addition to a series of exhibitions, the project will also include artistic and public discourse events.
About the project:
We are trapped in patterns.
We live within recurring structures — social, cultural, personal. We move in circles, retracing familiar paths. We recognize ourselves in ancient narratives; even new forms often refer back to long-familiar archetypes. We weave webs of identity in which we get entangled, reproducing matrices of the past even when we long for something new. We are afraid to step outside the familiar: strange architecture evokes anxiety, new art — confusion. We crave change, yet cling to what we know, even when it no longer works.
The artists in the project “Untangling Patterns” — from different generations and cultural backgrounds — each reflect on these structures in their own way. Their visual statements are attempts not only to recognize, but also to redraw the lines along which our thinking and perception move. Their artistic gestures are not only aesthetic experiences, but invitations to reconsider how we live, feel, and relate to the world.
Perhaps, to escape the labyrinth, we don’t need to search for an exit — but to change the way we move through it. And if art can offer a path — maybe this is it?

Updates, exhibition and event schedule on the website: www.muskar.art
email: gallery@muskar.art

Mihkel Muskar in residence at BAS CS Gallery as part of Kolonie Wedding
7 August – 10 November 2025
Mihkel Muskar is a curator, collector and cultural manager who specialises in contemporary art and intercultural dialogue. He has a particular interest in topics such as identity, memory culture and diversity. Since 2018, based in Berlin. He founded the Mihkel Muskar Galerie, which realised two exhibition and interdisciplinary performance programmes in temporary spaces in 2023 and 2024. These programmes featured emerging and established artists from Berlin, other regions of Germany and several European countries.
Previously, he coordinated international cultural initiatives in collaboration with NGOs, curated special screenings at an independent arthouse cinema and was engaged as a facilitator in non-formal citizenship education. He holds degrees in History and Psychology and has taken courses in Social Philosophy and Cultural Studies through academic programmes in Russia, Germany and the USA. His curatorial practice is accompanied by creative experimentation in writing, photography, and film.
www.muskar.art
email: mihkel@muskar.art

WITNESS X

Kulturpalast Wedding International
August 29th – September 7th 2025

participating artists: Bae Yun Jae, Mik Nim, Park So Yeon, Park Subeen, kurated by Yong Hae Sook & Pink Factory

Opening on Friday, August, 29th 2025 at 8pm
Finissage on Sunday, September 7th at 4pm
Opening hours: Fri, Sat, Sun from 3pm to 7pm and on demand

How incomplete is our own perspective? How determined by others do we see? And are we more than intersections of our own and the other? Four young South Korean artists approach the subjective view of the „I as witness,“ rewriting and rewriting it, searching for traces of the other. Four contemporary works from Korea – presented by the artist collective Pink Factory and realized in Berlin’s Wedding district.

Pink Factory is a self-organized art space for unconventional artistic positions that explore landscape, nature, and the conditions of artistic work. It is located in a rural area just outside the capital city of Seoul. This exhibition is the second collaboration between Kulturpalast Wedding and Pink Factory.

Further informations: https://pink-factory.tumblr.com/

_____________________________________________________

WITNESS X

2025년 8월 29일 - 9월 7일

참여작가: 배윤재, 믹님, 박소연, 박수빈
기획: 용해숙
장소: 쿨투어팔라스트 베딩 인터나찌오날(Freienwalder Str. 20, 13359 Berlin)
주최/주관: 분홍공장
협력: 쿨투어팔라스트 베딩 인터나찌오날

오프닝: 2025년 8월 29일(금) 20시부터
폐막: 2025년 9월 7일(일) 16시부터
관람시간: 금~일, 15-19시, 그 외에 메세지 주시면 예약 방문도 가능합니다.

전시소개:
자신의 관점은 얼마나 불완전한가? 우리는 자신의 정체성이 얼마나 많이 타인에 의해 영향받은 것인지 그리고 자아는 타인과의 교차점을 넘어설 수 있는지에 대한 시각을 가지고 있을까?

본 전시는 한국 젊은 예술가 4명의 ’목격자로서의 나‘라는 주관적 관점에 접근하여 타자의 흔적을 찾아 다시 쓰고 또 쓰는 것에서 출발한다. 홍천 지역문화 공간 ’분홍공장‘은 베를린 베딩지역에서 제작된 조각가의 새로운 작업을 선보인다.

분홍공장은 지역과 자연 사이에 예술 작업의 조건을 다루는 예술적 입장을 위해 자체적으로 조직된 강원도 홍천에 기반한 단체이다. 이번 전시는 쿨투어팔라스트 베딩 인터나찌오날과 분홍공장의 첫 번째 협업이다.

Alina Pak
out of context

What if we place images familiar from childhood into other dimensions? Alina Pak, feeling everywhere like a stranger and always a migrant, creates portraits of symbols of the cultures she comes into contact with, removing them from the cultural context itself. In her paintings, objects familiar from childhood – windows, chairs, monuments, logos – float in semantic weightlessness, in emptiness. The usual order of meanings is broken, the objects can also be perceived as abstractly mysterious, like alien ships.
Alina Pak was born into a Korean family in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, grew up in Moscow in the cultural environment of the post-Soviet era, and ended up in Berlin. She constantly finds herself in a setting alien to her own identity. Her art arises precisely from this tension, from the discrepancy between personal experience and collective patterns of culture.
Through her works, the artist gives us a chance to find ourselves in another dimension, to experience the liberation from dependence on patterns of perception, to recall the corners of our memory covered in cobwebs, to supplement what we see with our own context, and to create our own personal reality within the painting.

The exhibition continues the project “Muster entwirren / Untangling Patterns” by Mihkel Muskar Galerie in residency at BAS CS Gallery as part of Kolonie Wedding.

Alina Pak
out of context
Fr. 29.08: Vernissage 18:00 – 21:30
30-31.08 and 4-5.09: 15:00 – 19:00 and by appointment
Sa. 6.09: Finissage 17:00 – 21:00. Curator’s tour 17:30 (in English)

www.muskar.art
email: gallery@muskar.art

Our duo exhibition is titled ”Ausgang – Exit”. Everyday definition of the word is ”an act of leaving a place” or ”a way out of a building”. For example there are ”Ausgang” signs in everywhere in metro stations and signs can save lives in the event of fire. The word exit also has deeper philosophical connotations. ”Exitus” comes from latin and means exit, ending, end or death. Our final exit is moving from on state to another, from life to death. The Nazis used the term with cruel irony, calling the entrance gate of Sachsenhausen concentration camp ”Eingang A” an the exit gate ”Ausgang Z”. There is also a desperate search for away out, exit, of the protracted wars in Ukraine an Gaza. In our exhibition, metaphora ”exit” leads the viewer to consider different ways of of exiting dead ends in front of Alexander Horn´s fascinating paintings and Ilkka Sariola´s large expressive coal drawings.

Alexander Horn lives and works in Mannheim and Ludwigshafen and Ilkka Sariola in Helsinki. We met each other for the first time year 2017 when we both took part in group exhibition ”Nachstein” at Projektraum Toolbox. Even then, a deep understanding arose between us an our art. This is our third duo exhibition in Germany.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloer Straße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Ilkka Sariola, rom series Requiemm Hind & Shani, 230 x 150 cm, charcoal on paper, 2023-2025

Alexander Horn, aus der Serie Only the Rocks Remain

Cornelia Groß
Stories Recycled

Cornelia Groß collects material, visual, and textual fragments of a recent past in her East Berlin home – testimonies of her own story and of others – and assembles them into unconventional art objects and pictorial compositions. By detaching these fragments from their original contexts of meaning, she traces the potential arising from the interplay of forms and brings it into resonance with the echo of her impressions.
What has vanished resurfaces, the unconscious becomes visible and tangible, and the enigmatic appears. Her works open up spaces in which the hidden patterns of memory quietly reveal themselves and can be felt anew – Stories recycled.

The exhibition continues the project “Muster entwirren / Untangling Patterns” by Mihkel Muskar Galerie in residency at BAS CS Gallery as part of Kolonie Wedding.

Cornelia Groß
Stories Recycled
10–16.09: 15:00 – 19:00 and by appointment
Vernissage 10.09 from 18:00

www.muskar.art
email: gallery@muskar.art

Sławomir Brzoska

neue Objekte und Installationen

Opening hours

Sun, Tue, Wed: 2:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. and Mon: 5:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.

and by prior arrangement via email
Exhibition: 5 Sep – 26 Oct 2025

As part of the exhibition series Contemporary Art from Finland, Wolf & Galentz Gallery presents the artist Jukka Korkeila, one of Finland’s most renowned contemporary painters. His works have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries around the world; among others, he represented his home country at the São Paulo Art Biennale, he had a solo show at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and an extensive retrospective at the HAM Helsinki Art Museum.

We are delighted to have the opportunity to show Jukka Korkeila’s work in our gallery. Korkeila is a fantastic painter who, in addition to the two-dimensionality of the picture, also stands out for his masterful handling of three-dimensionality, often creating complex installative spatial arrangements into which his painting is integrated.

Between figuration and abstraction, his works are marked by an expressive gesture and often painted in vivid colours. The subjects of his paintings are, at least at a first glance, corpulent male bodies, sometimes depicted with genitals. ‘At a first glance’ because he manages to create highly multilayered images that are never fully or immediately decipherable; they remain open and they do not deliver any kind of clear ‘message’. Korkeila is openly gay and a devout Christian of the Eastern Orthodox Church – his works are always simultaneously about corporeality and spirituality. They are also about discrimination and shame, about power, violence and marginalisation, about grief, emotion, the soul, hope and light. That he manages to evoke all these divergent elements at once is undoubtedly due to his painterly skill, and certainly not least to the subtle irony that runs through his work.
He achieves something astonishing: (self-)irony in dignity. What emerges is a deeply human art – an art that engages with the very essence of what it means to be human.

This year, the Hämeenlinna Art Museum in Finland is dedicating a retrospective exhibition to Korkeila, which can be seen until 19 October 2025 and is entitled Pimeys on täynna valoa / Darkness is Full of Light, from which also the exhibition at Wolf & Galentz derives its title, in German: Dunkelheit ist voller Licht. On the occasion of the retrospective in Hämeenlinna, a catalogue was published in collaboration with Artbear Books, which will now be presented in Berlin as part of the exhibition.

Zäsuren / Caesurae. Conventional foundations that seemed unshakeable suddenly lose their power, and people find themselves in a state of inner turmoil. The obvious becomes ambiguous, familiar patterns collapse, and personal histories cause doubt and anxiety.
Elya May Myau draws on personal experience, including her earliest memories, but does not limit herself to autobiography. Referring to recognisable motifs from collective memory, the artist transforms her own narratives into images that resonate beyond the individual. However, in her works, even these recognisable patterns take on a new meaning and appear in a different perspective. Thus, traditional cultural constructs cease to be stable symbols and reveal their vulnerability.
In her works, Elya May Myau captures dramatic states at the moment when the worldview begins to disintegrate, leaving a person alone with uncertainty. This instability is filled with tension: there is no consolation in it, but there is the truth of experience, which the artist makes visible and shareable.

The exhibition continues the project “Muster entwirren / Untangling Patterns” by Mihkel Muskar Galerie in residency at BAS CS Gallery as part of Kolonie Wedding.

Elya May Myau
Zäsuren / Caesurae
9-12 October: 16:00—21:00
and by appointment

www.muskar.art
email: gallery@muskar.art

Opening: Fri, 26 September 2025
7 pm: Exhibition Talk (video installation on view from 6 pm onwards)
8 pm: Celebration of opening

Art Laboratory Berlin invites the audience to meet Los Angeles based artist Rachel Mayeri and her newest artwork R/P FLIP R.I.P., with its European premiere in this solo exhibition. Join us for the Berlin opening on Fri, 26 September. Earlier on the same evening there will be a public EXHIBITION TALK (7 pm, on-site) with the artist and cognitive scientist Deborah Forster about their collaboration on this new work. On 7 October, there will be a COLLOQUIUM (online) with Rachel Mayeri and anthropologist Stefan Helmreich.

R/P FLIP R.I.P. (2024, 11:31 min) is an experimental new video work by Rachel Mayeri about the R/P FLIP, which stands for Research Platform FLoating Instrument Platform (1962-2023), the world-famous nautical rarity that flips 90 degrees to become a live-in buoy for studying the ocean. The FLIP was designed for stability to study acoustics in a turbulent ocean, yet ironically the interior is fluid, built for living both in horizontal and vertical orientations. In the artwork, performers activate the FLIP’s architecture as a playground for disorientation: floors become walls, and doors become holes. Intercut with military and oceanographic films, the FLIP film becomes a platform for conceptual flips: landlubbers encountering the alien world of the ocean, and of oceanography’s shift from militarism to ecology. Commissioned for the Getty-sponsored Southern California landmark show PST Art: Art & Science Collide, created by artist Rachel Mayeri, R/P FLIP R.I P. is currently presented as a three-channel video installation at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Between the 1960s and 1980s, FLIP’s mission made a dramatic flip from military reconnaissance to environmental crisis. FLIP started out as a platform to support anti-submarine echolocation, but by the 1990s had become a tool for understanding the experience of whales in an ocean under siege by human impacts. The unique interior is a space M.C. Escher might envision — designed for living in both horizontal and vertical orientations, there are sinks at right angles, a stove that swivels, and confusing doors, ladders, and portals. Once docked in Point Loma, California, the FLIP was decommissioned in 2020 and towed away for dismantling in 2023.

The key fascination of the FLIP is that the vessel appears to capsize with people on board. To reenact this spectacle, artist Rachel Mayeri directed actors on the FLIP as if the vessel were flipping — without ever leaving port. With the simple trick of rotating the frame, the actors appear to be gravitating toward the walls as the room or ship rolls. These scenes activate the disorientating architecture of the vessel. They also echo the mental gymnastics we go through to prepare for cataclysmic events. The narrative is motivated by the actual procedures of crew and scientists working together to outfit the FLIP for a research voyage, loading and securing scientific instruments, choreographing their movements to each other and the logic of the ship.

More information: https://rachelmayeri.com/flip/
and https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/exhibitions/capsize-chronicles/

Rachel Mayeri is a Los Angeles-based artist working at the intersection of science and art. Her videos, installations, and writing projects explore topics ranging from the history of special effects to the human animal. Commissioned as part of Getty’s PST Art: Art & Science Collide, she produced a new three-channel video installation called R/P FLIP R.I.P. at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institute of Oceanography about a Cold War research vessel built to rotate 90 degrees. In 2006 she began a multi-year exploration of the human-animal continuum called Primate Cinema, often in collaboration with cognitive scientist / anthropologist of robots, Deborah Forster. The series culminated in a major award from The Wellcome Trust. Commissioned by Arts Catalyst, she created a film expressly for chimpanzees – Apes as Family, which subsequently showed at Sundance, Berlinale, Ars Electronica, Art Laboratory Berlin, and Microwave Media Art Festival in Hong Kong. Orfeo Nel Canale Alimentare, an animated opera about the digestive tract, was commissioned by Imagine Science Films and showed at REDCAT Theater in downtown Los Angeles. The Life Cycle of Toxoplasma Gondii is a 29 screen installation about the memetic proliferation of cat videos featured at Pitzer College Art Gallery and the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Meeting. As a Guest Curator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology she produced the permanent kinetic exhibition on Miracles and Disasters in Renaissance and Baroque Theater. A pioneer in art-science, her projects are featured in books such as Integrative Contemporary Art and Science Practices (Talasek, ed. 2025), The Art-Science Symbiosis (Velasco and Nieto, eds. 2024), and The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture (Terranova, ed., 2017). Professor at Harvey Mudd College, she teaches courses such as “Animal Media Studies”, “Nonhuman Media Art”, and “Art & Biology”.

Krzysztof “Leon” Dziemaszkiewicz ( Leon is only my Art name) born 1963 in Poland, Berlin based performer,  visual artist, using tape and body as basic material, ( using very often recycling material) .

Early 90this starting his carier in Gdansk Poland as a dancer and choreographer at phisical Teatr Ekspresji. 1995 grunded his own company ” Read my lips theatre”. Since 1998 living and working Berlin – Gdansk, as basic. His art was presenting in USA, FRANCE, GERMANY, Turkiye, Brasil, Canada, Italy and many others country.

  The aim of the trans-genical and trans-sexual work of Dziemaszkiewicz is to join the opposites and ask qestions about the borders between animalism, humanity.

His Art reaches for feelings, instincts and emotions. Honesty is the main and most important thing. Often used nudity is the manifestation of happines, naturality and spontaneousness.

Art is life for Dziemaszkiewicz and can happen anywehre. Boundlessness and uncompromisity towards the social coufinement and limitation creates the only and noo-repetable language of artistic creation. The artist is the one that he wants to create in the name of the freedom of each human being.

 2014 – 2022  was living and working together in Berin with legendary and iconic french designer Manfred Thierry Mugler. Till His death January 23th 2022 in Paris. Since this time Dziemaszkiewicz very concentraited working on big formating taping pictures ( some of them 9m/3m, 3m/4m ) and objects, preapering new performances in big part in dedication to his love 

Juha Sääski & Henrik Jacob
Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
28.3.-19.4. 2026
Opening 27.3. 2026, 7 pm

Open on Kolonie Weekend Sat: 28.3. 2–5 pm. Sun: 29.3. 2–5 pm

Opening hours: Tue–Fri: 2–6 pm

At the end of March, Finnish artist Juha Sääski and Berlin artist Henrik Jacob will present two works that complement each other and fundamentally change the gallery space.

Street view-street still lifes

Juha Sääski is exhibiting oil paintings which show day-time street views in sleeping places of homeless people in some cities. He is alienating the theme by painting the sleeping accessories, the matresses, blankets, the tents and clothes without the person itself. He is mixing them with street art imagery, sometimes also the person may be drawn with a fragile line either in front of his/her mattress, or on the wall , behind the tent, added in the middle of street art.
Often the mattresses, blankets and the tents are very joufully colourful in their gray and dirty surroundings. In the same time this contradiction contains a sad undertone and a human tragedy. The paintings could be described as street view-street still lifes with empathy towards hard life.

Berlin Wall – Another Berlin Wall

In his work “Berlin Wall,” Henrik Jacob also focuses on a peripheral area – a place not at the center of social life, yet one that reveals much about it – the so-called “silent place.” Referencing the floor tiles of the Toolbox Gallery, he extends them into the space and across the walls. He uses modeling clay to gradually insert the toilet wall of an original Berlin bar into the front corner of the gallery. Like Juha Sääski, he is interested in graffiti residue, tags, and stickers as signs of interpersonal communication. At the same time, his installation is an inventory of urban life that transforms, deconsecrates, and humorously expands the gallery’s white cube.

Enjoy to explore!

Olga Survillo
Übergepäck / Oversized Baggage

Our patterns in dealing with the old are precisely how we deal with the patterns that have accumulated throughout our lives, which make up our identity and sometimes become an excessive burden. Olga Survillo meditatively draws the texture of objects from the past and lace structures, filling her paintings with reflections on nostalgia or raising questions about the nature of attachments and the usefulness of storage rooms.
The result is artwork that reveals not only objects, but also the stories they carry. Reality is filled with surrealism. Like the dilemmas of relationships with one’s own baggage — material and cultural — Olga Survillo’s paintings simultaneously address the everyday and the existential, inviting us to reflect on our own patterns and on what to let go of and what to keep in our luggage.

The exhibition continues the project “Muster entwirren / Untangling Patterns” by Mihkel Muskar Galerie in residency at BAS CS Gallery as part of Kolonie Wedding.

Olga Survillo
Übergepäck’ / Oversized Baggage
20-21 and 26-27-28 September: 16:00 – 21:00 and by appointment

www.muskar.art
email: gallery@muskar.art

Warmly welcome to our next opening on Friday, 31. October 2025, at 7 pm

Exhibition: 2.–22.11.2025

Opening hours: Wed–Sat 3–7 pm

Kolonie Wedding Weekend open on Sunday, 2.11.2025 from 2–6 pm

Présage means to foretell or predict, often indicating a warning or sense of something about to happen – typically something unpleasant or unwelcome. It may also refer to an intuition or feeling of foreboding. Essentially, it is a sign anticipating an imminent event.
A certain unease exists in the works of Claudia Brieske and Michelle Lloyd. An underlying anxiety rises slowly, manifests itself quietly and looms.

In both artists’ work the pressure of pent-up, charged energy – be it from a seismographic, meteorological or other atmospheric force – declares its presence and requires relea
While the two artists’ interpretations emerge from different perspectives and artistic disciplines – video, sound and painting – they simultaneously focus on the tension of the frozen time fragment, just before the onset …
This présage is a disembodied future: it cannot be tangibly grasped, yet etches physical and psychological traces in the present nevertheless.

Artists

Michelle Lloyd and Claudia Brieske, both artists from the Mengerzeile studio house, are showing the painting cycle ‘ONSET’ and the video/sound installation ‘Falling Forward Slightly’, created in Istanbul, at the TOOLBOX gallery. This exhibition marks the start of an exchange between the TOOLBOX and Kunstraum m3 project spaces.

Illustrations & prints by the amazing Andreas Hartung.
Including the complete illustrations for the international bestseller “Rauschen im Nichts” (Noise of Nothing) by the drunk Stanislaw Mirrowenkowitsch in a unique 3D look. You will be amazed.

Fri: 7-10 p.m.
Sat/Sun: 2-6 p.m.

Marina Koldobskaya
As-if flowers

Marina Koldobskaya explores archetypal patterns, returning again and again in her work to certain images. Beasts, flowers, humans — signs of inner states that live in us longer than we are aware of them. Their forms are deliberately simple and stylized, and this gives them depth. The artist does not depict but extracts — movements, impulses, rhythms that compose an emotional code. Each line, each figure is like a formula of feeling, repeating within us with a primeval precision.
In these paintings there is no pure fear and no pure tenderness — only a contradiction that is never immediately grasped. As within the blacks of Marina Koldobskaya’s canvases hide several different pigments, so each of our states pretends to be something single and uniform while remaining a complex weave beneath. As her as-if red always holds multiple shades — so many that none can be properly named — we too, unable to define what we feel, give up and use a conventional word. Sometimes, correcting ourselves — as if.

The exhibition continues the project “Muster entwirren / Untangling Patterns” by Mihkel Muskar Galerie in residency at BAS CS Gallery as part of Kolonie Wedding.

Marina Koldobskaya
As-if flowers
16-19 October: 16:00—21:00 and by appointment

www.muskar.art
email: gallery@muskar.art

„LOOP“
Irina Novarese
30.05. – 06.06.2026

Opening: Fri, 29.05.2026, 19:00

Opening hours:
Sat, 30. + Sun, 31.05.: 15:00–18:00
01. – 05.06. by appointment: +49-(0)179-8593744
Sat, 06.06., 15:00–18:00 (The artist is present)

1967 born in Szopienice (Upper Silesia) 

he studied at the Art Institute of the University of Silesia from 1991 to 1995

Since 2011 full professor at the University of Arts in Poznan and Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice.

Sławomir Brzoska has been the author of over 60 solo exhibitions and participant of more than 140 group exhibitions in Poland and abroad.

Sławomir Brzoska is an artist whose activities include sculpture, installation art, videos, land art and performances, as well as a curator, for example of the preMeditation project, which includes exhibitions, seminars, conferences and art exhibitions. 

Sławomir Brzoska is also a traveller as an artist. In his book „A Year of Wandering Life“, he describes his trip around the world (June 2007 – June 2008). This took him through 23 countries and over a total distance of 100,000 kilometres from South America to Australia and Asia to the Middle East. In addition to travelling, he carried out a range of artistic activities, made films, took photographs and held workshops for children around the world.

„KATMANLAR”
Tim Cierpiszewski
01.- 08.11.2025

Opening: Fri, 31.10.2025, 19:00

Opening hours:
Sat, 01.11. + Sun, 02.11.: 15:00 –18:00
03. – 08.11. by appointment: +49-(0)179-8593744

Tim Cierpiszewski combines digital image production, painting, and spatial installation into a practice that understands the exhibition space as an active, meaningful place. He takes image fragments from digital archives, transforms them, and creates new differences through repetition in the sense of Deleuze. His works emerge as open, processual systems in which the work, space, and viewer interact dynamically. Drawing on Foucault, he reflects on the power structures of the exhibition space and makes architecture itself part of the discourse. In this way, Cierpiszewski develops an artistic practice beyond fixed genre boundaries that combines difference, spatial criticism, and media reflection.

After studying philosophy, Tim Cierpiszewski studied fine art at the Münster Academy of Fine Arts under Prof. Maik and Dirk Löbbert and at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts under Prof. Martin Gostner. He graduated with a diploma in Münster in 2009. Cierpiszewski has exhibited nationally and internationally in renowned museums, art halls, galleries, and art associations.

https://timcie.com/

A lot of art can happen in twenty years: from abstract to figurative, as an artistic engagement with politics or as art for art’s sake, sometimes concept-heavy and profound, sometimes light-footed and playful. Yet even a fraction of that can show what the Prima Center has been, for its audience and artists, for the Kolonie Wedding and the neighborhood, for friends and family, and of course for Jovan Balov himself. This exhibition sheds light on the center of his curatorial work.

We take a look back at what the Prima Center was, and whom it aimed to be for, refracted through a kaleidoscope of art and other finds from the archive. Featuring long-standing contributors such as Miro Masin, Slavco Sokolovski, Vlatko Čerić (image) and photographs by Doroti Packova and Irina Arsova, along with surprising digital excursions.

Galya Lutzky
Pattern Error

Galya Lutzky is fascinated by patterns. Coming from a scientific background, she continues to explore the world as a field of structures, rhythms, and repetitions, admiring the regularities and rightness she discovers. Yet what captivates her even more are the errors — the moments when order falters, when a pattern breaks or bends, whether by intention or by chance. It is precisely there, where the system trembles and loses its balance, that genuine artistic curiosity is born.
The works, created with acrylic on mirrored film, are not the fixation of a moment with a captured glint but fragments of a landscape that respond to their surroundings — to shifting light, to the movement of the day, to the breathing of space itself. These matrices become a free play of reflections, a breathing geometric abstraction through which everyone can glimpse themselves and the stories that matter to them.
It is the viewer who completes this exploration: their reflection appears on the surface, distorting, merging with lines and colour. It becomes a look at oneself through patterns — a brief moment of deconstruction of one’s own image.

The exhibition continues the project “Muster entwirren / Untangling Patterns” by Mihkel Muskar Galerie in residency at BAS CS Gallery as part of Kolonie Wedding.

Galya Lutzky
Musterfehler / Pattern Error
23-26 October: 16:00—21:00 and by appointment

www.muskar.art
email: gallery@muskar.art

Untangling Patterns
Cornelia Gross | Olga Survillo | blaxx443 | Galya Lutzky | Elya May Myau | Marina Koldobskaya | Alina Pak

We are trapped by patterns. Yet, by rethinking the matrices of perception and response to the universe’s infinite diversity that are rooted in our cultures and identities, we can make patterns our allies. Transforming them from a means of simplification into a tool for a more enriching vision and interaction with the complexity of all. Into a lens that allows us to see reality not pixilated, not as a combination of zeros and ones, but as an unbroken continuum with no boundaries in its boundless multiplicity of dimensions, and with no clear boundaries between its (non)elements within. And along the way, finding beauty, both in diversity and in patterns — in these fascinating and mysterious combinations of the archetypal and the cultural.
The exhibition concludes an artistic research project involving seven artists — a three-month residency of Mihkel Muskar Galerie at BAS CS Gallery within the framework of Kolonie Wedding.
The artists of the project ‘Untangling Patterns’ — from different generations and cultural backgrounds — reflect on this theme in their own way. Their visual statements are attempts not only to recognise, but also to redraw the lines along which our thinking and perception move. Their artistic gestures are not only an aesthetic experience, but also an invitation to rethink how we live, feel and interact with the world.

Muster entwirren / Untangling Patterns
31 October — Vernissage: 18:00—22:00
1, 2, 7 and 8 November: 16:00—21:00
and by appointment

www.muskar.art
email: gallery@muskar.art

Works by Stefan Beck, who would have turned seventy on December 26, 2025.

Stefan Beck would have turned seventy on December 26, 2025. Time for a brief retrospective of his comprehensive artistic work.

A lot of art can happen in twenty years: from abstract to figurative, as an artistic engagement with politics or as art for art’s sake, sometimes concept-heavy and profound, sometimes light-footed and playful. Yet even a fraction of that can show what the Prima Center has been, for its audience and artists, for the Kolonie Wedding and the neighborhood, for friends and family, and of course for Jovan Balov himself. This exhibition sheds light on the center of his curatorial work.

We take a look back at what the Prima Center was, and whom it aimed to be for, refracted through a kaleidoscope of art and other finds from the archive. Featuring long-standing contributors such as Miro Masin, Slavco Sokolovski, Vlatko Čerić (image) and photographs by Doroti Packova and Irina Arsova, along with surprising digital excursions.

With Jovan Balov, Miro Masin, Slavčo Sokolovski, Blagojče Naumoski Bane, Doroti Pačkova, Ilina Arsova, Tanja Dobrovocki, Igor Toševski, Miroljub Filipović Filimir, Bernard Karamandi, Shqipe Mehmeti, Krunislav Stojanovksi, Siniša Nedelkoski, Trajče Blaževski and Birgit Maria Wolf.

The joint exhibition Softcore Urbanism brings two artistic positions into a confrontational exchange. In their work, Paula Pechar and Orlando Frido explore areas of tension between nature and urbanity, intimacy and public life. While Paula Pechar works with textile and organic materials, Orlando Frido draws on urban forms of expression such as graffiti, club aesthetics and raw materials.
 
The juxtaposition creates a metaphorical duel between soft and hard forms, organic movement and urban stagnation. The exhibition is an attempt to reflect on the destructive but also creative relationship between humans and their environment.

Paula Pechar, 21 years old, grew up in Berlin and focuses on natural elements, organic structures and textile interweavings. The body is at the centre of her work in its fragility, its form and its relationship to sexuality, femininity and identity.

Orlando Frido (20), who grew up in Hermsdorf, Berlin, deals with urban cultures such as graffiti, club culture and drag. He also explores questions of sexuality, identity, personal experiences and the aesthetic and social dimensions of the raw materials of our present, which he condenses into new artistic images.

“EUROPA OHNE ENDE”
One Night Group Show

Fri, 28.11.2025, 19:00

Artists:

Boris Abel, Stefan Alber, Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka V Stylianidou, Elena Alonso Fernández, Michelle Alperin, Sonja Arz, Mathilda Augart, Matthias Bade, Quirin Bäumler, Detlef Baltrock, Hannah Becher, Matthias Beckmann, Thomas Behling, Ina Bierstedt, Maria A. Bierwirth + Nele Rohland, Antje Blumenstein, Roland Boden, Sascha Boldt, Alexander Böckel, Sandra Boeschenstein, Katja Brinkmann, Susanne Britz, Julia Brodauf, Johannes Bünemann, Alexander Callsen, Diego Castro, Alexine Chanel, Laure Chenard, Kyung-hwa Choi-ahoi, Tim Cierpiszewski, Chun-Tzu Chang, Herbert De Colle, Almut Determeyer, Thomas Diafas, Nanett Dietz, Nataly Dietz, Annedore Dietze, Peter Dobroschke, Maurice Doherty, Mirjam Dorsch, Boris Duhm, Stefan Draschan, Stefan Heinrich Ebner, Knut Eckstein, Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout, Annette Erlenwein, Christel Fetzer, Frederik Foert, Frank Förster, Daniela Fromberg, Roland Fuhrmann, Matthias Galvez, Yishay Garbasz & Nikola Lutz, Ingo Gerken, April Gertler, Robert Gfader, Monika Goetz, Karø Goldt, Tommaso Gorla, Massoud Graf-Hachempour, Mariola Groener, Thomas Grötz, Stephan Groß, Andreas Hachulla, Simone Häckel, Stephanie Hanna, Theemetra Harizani, Andrea Hartinger, Franziska Harnisch, Andreas Helfer, Thomas Bo Henriksson, Gabriele Herzog, Matthias Hesselbacher, Björn Heyn, Annika Hippler, Birgit Hölmer, Janne Höltermann, Katrin Hoffert, Sabine Hoffmann, Magret Holz, Stephan Homann, Ricarda Hoop, Esther Horn, Fabian Hub, Franziska Hünig, Irène Hug, Kama Jackowska, Patrick Jambon, Maarten Janssen, Monika Jarecka, Thomas Jocher, Boris Jöns, Uwe Jonas, Sven Kalden, Elena Karakitsou, Isabel Kerkermeier, Werner Kernebeck, Manfred Kirschner, Julia Kissina, Ulrike + Günther-Jürgen Klein, Stephanie Kloss, Sebastian Klug, Silke Koch, Karen Koltermann, Anette Kuhn, Hans Kuiper, Zoltan Kunckel, Linda Kutzki, Philipp Lachenmann, Oliver Lanz, Simone Lanzenstiel, Anett Lau, Alexander Laudenberg, Alex Lebus, Daniela Lehmann Carrasco, Niina Lehtonen Braun, Ronny Lischinski, Sabine Linse, Christine Lohr, Catherine Lorent, Petra Lottje, Antonia Low, Mahony, Nadja Marcin, Rei Matsushima, Tamaki Matsushima + Soji Shimizu, Matthias Mayer, Yves Mettler, Peter Mönnig, Oliver Möst, Thomas Monses, Christl Mudrak, Paula Muhr, Leo de Munk, Robert Muntean, Berit Myrebøe, Joe Neave, Fernando Niño-Sanchez, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Nora Olearius, Can Oral aka Khan of Finland, Ursula Paletta, Kirsten Palz, Matteo Peterlini, Valeska Peschke, Torsten Prothmann, Luisa Puschendorf, Kathrin Rabenort, Benjamin Renter, Ralf Ritter, Susanne Roewer, Stefan Römer, Torsten Derk Römer, Stefan Roigk, Andreas Sachsenmaier, Katrin Salentin, Daniel Sambo-Richter, Michel Santos, Swen Erik Scheuerling, Sabrina Schieke, Adrian Schiesser, Birgit Schlieps, Marco Schmitt, Janis Schroeder, Michael Schultze, Ulrika Segerberg, Olivia W. Seiling, Bettina Sellmann, Tanja Selzer, Kerstin Serz, Heiko Sievers, Heidi Sill, Johanna Smiatek, Erik Smith, Sean Smuda, Elisabeth Sonneck, Georg Spehr, Anna Staffel, Gabriele Stellbaum, Tommy Støckel, Filippos Tatakis, ANna Tautfest, Ralf Tekaat, Alex Tennigkeit, Anja Teske, Thea Timm, Miriam Tölke, Peter Torp, Petra Trenkel, Kata Unger, Héctor Velázquez Gutiérrez, Julien Villaret, Gabriel Vormstein, Yvonne Wahl, Linda Weiss, Bettina Weiß, Anna-Lena Wenzel, Julia Werhahn, Polly Enya Wiesner, Markus Willeke, Ila Wingen, Markus Wirthmann, Gisela Wrede, Gloria Zein, Ella Ziegler, Michaela Zimmer, Elmar Zimmermann, Oliver Zwink

Intro:
Since 2005, quotes from past decades (mostly from the 1980 s) have headlined the annual One Night Group Shows at Spor Klübü.

“Europa ohne Ende” (Europe without end)

In 1977, the Düsseldorf band Kraftwerk released their legendary album “Trans Europa Express” with the song “Europa Endlos” (Europe Endless) as the opener on the A-side. In 1980, Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto released his solo album “B-2 Unit” featuring the song “The End Of Europe.” As the last track on the B-side, the song marks the end of the record with its sombre mood. Both albums are considered musically influential for several electronic music styles and were received intensively in this regard. What do these milestones in music history say beyond the music itself? Euphoria about Europe versus the downfall of Europe?

Based on the song titles cited, the annual One-Night-Group Show at Spor Klübü addresses the multifaceted topic of Europe with its broad culture of debate. Will Europe continue to grow together? Will the EU, the European confederation of states, destroy itself or will it be destroyed by external influences? Are there ideas for more far-reaching concepts beyond Europe and the EU? What does the European community spirit mean for our identity? Back to the music. In 2016, in response to the Brexit referendum, Kae Tempest released the song “Europe Is Lost” on the album “Let Them Eat Chaos” with the lyrics “Europe is lost, America lost, London lost – Still we are clamouring victory – All that is meaningless rules – We have learned nothing from history…”

ear all,

We cordially invite you to the final exhibition of our three–year projectBESONDERmüll – Art, Ecology, Urbanism.Friday, 28 November 2025 – Opening at 6 p.m.Saturday, 29 November 2025 – 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.Project Space n, Kolonie WeddingBiesentaler Str. 5, 13359 BerlinAs part of the Kolonie Wedding weekendOn display are works by children and young people from Berlin, Ukraine and other countries of origin who have worked with recycled materials and natural finds in our workshops. The themes range from urban nature, water and seasons to animals and city characters in Berlin to their own visions of the future.On 29 November from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., there will be a hands-on activity in the exhibition. Visitors are cordially invited to get creative themselves.This presentation marks the conclusion of a very special project, which was made possible between 2023 and 2025 thanks to the generous support of the PwC Foundation. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for this support.We look forward to welcoming you to the exhibition!

Organised by butterbrot_education and Kulturschafft e.V.

Project sponsor: Kulturschafft e.V.

Partners: Jüli 30 KiezTreff, Projektraum nBESONDERmüll

Team: Aleksandra Yurieva-Civjane, Alexandra Goloborodko

Thanks to digital photography, we can now take as many photos as we want, whenever we want.
It happens automatically, without a second thought: seen, snapped, saved.
It’s all about documentation.
The result is what matters; the process of taking the photo is irrelevant.
We no longer consider how the final image came to be.
That’s just everyday life.

Many professional photographers avoid digital cameras and only use analogue media.
The negatives provide the initial impression of the photos.
If the negative image is more interesting than the positive one, it can be considered a work of art in its own right.

The exhibition ‘My Negatives’ presents negative images created based on digital photographs.
Roman Zolotoi focused on night views of Paris, Moscow, London, Rome and Berlin.
The negative images have a light, slightly blue tint, which emerged from dark, slightly yellow-tinged night sky images.

Roman was born in Moscow in 1985. He has lived in Berlin for 16 years, where he studied and earned his PhD at Humboldt University.
Since his school days, he has been interested in photography and videography, producing numerous short films himself.

In this exhibition, he presents negatives taken between 2010 and 2017 to highlight their unique nature and value.

Join us on Fri, 28 November 2025 for the first of several upcoming ARTIST SCIENTIST DIALOGUES that will take place in the context of the current research project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS at Art Laboratory Berlin. Composer and sound researcher Julius Holtz, one of the CHRYSALIS artists in residence, will speak in dialogue with Prof. Dr. Julia von Thienen from the German University of Digital Science.

Friday, 28 November 2025, 7 pm
No registration needed
Free entry, donations welcome

Julia von Thienen is a researcher, educator, and innovator at the intersection of digital engineering and collaborative creativity. Julia’s research in the field of Sonic Thinking and Neuro Design at the Hasso Plattner Institute inspired Julius Holtz’ current artistic investigations into the relationship of sound and Brain Computer Interfaces. In addition, Julius will discuss his artistic research into the interaction among participants, sound environments, the formation of (self-)consciousness, and the creation of spaces that invite active listening.

Through technical, biological, and conceptual insights into the design of his Brain Computer Interface enhanced listening sessions, Julius will demonstrate how he translates mind activity into sound compositions via real-time data sonification. Mindfulness and the practice of active listening are closely connected: What new perspectives emerge from the act of listening to oneself as well as listening to others? What role does conscious and mindful action play for our society and environment? How can technological innovations contribute to fostering or transforming these qualities?

About CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

During 2025 and 2026, Art Laboratory Berlin is unfolding the new innovative project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS with an interdisciplinary exchange between art and science in Berlin science laboratories, kindly supported by Lottostiftung Berlin. Building on Berlin’s unique status as a global centre for arts and sciences, we aim to create new synergies based on topics of current research. In collaboration with a consortium of scientists from the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, University of the Arts Berlin, the Charité and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Art Laboratory Berlin is initiating artist-in-lab residencies for four internationally recognized, Berlin-based artists – Helena Nikonole, Julius Holtz, Sybille Neumeyer, and Margherita Pevere. We expect strong outcomes in transdisciplinary knowledge transfer, artistic research, art science communication, and some new artworks critically highlighting 21st-century innovations.

About the speakers

Julius Holtz is a composer and sound researcher whose work explores intersections of electroacoustic music, media art, and interactive sound environments. His practice explores multisensory formats that combine music and sound design, visuals, and audience participation, resulting in projects such as SONIC SCULPTURE (Berliner Festspiele) and INTROSPECTIVE GARDEN (Charité Berlin and MIT). His current research connects generative AI with neural activity, creating adaptive soundscapes that probe our concepts of consciousness, identity, and collectivity. Rooted in Berlin’s 1990s club culture and later shaped at the University of the Arts, his work bridges experimental performance, technological innovation, and artistic research. Julius Holtz’s artistic research operates at the intersection of neuroscience and sound art. It focuses on the development of sound environments that engage participants through sensorics and data sonification, embedding them within the artwork itself. In this context, he presented the project Introspective Garden at Charité Berlin, the HPI Potsdam, and the MIT Tangible Media Group. This research is the starting point for his project in CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS at Art Laboratory Berlin, where Julius is collaborating with scientists from the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, HU Berlin as well as the Institute of Physiology about Sleep Research & Clinical Chronobiology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

Prof. Dr. Julia von Thienen is a researcher, educator, and innovator at the intersection of digital engineering and collaborative creativity. The approach of her research group unites technological innovation with insights from neuro-psychology, design research, and the arts. With an academic background in neuro-psychology and several decades of experience at engineering departments – such as the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, in collaboration with Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – her studies explore creativity from various angles: how we create, who creates, when and where creation occurs, what is produced, and why. She also investigates the impacts that emerge from creative processes, tracing pathways from invention to innovation and the ripple effects that follow. A significant strand of her group’s research examines creation across multiple sensory modalities: language or visuals, sound, tangibles, movement, scent, or taste. Research and teaching in her domain invite a spectrum of approaches, from functional design and engineering to artistic expression. As the initiator of the Neurodesign Group at HPI and in her current role as Professor of Design Thinking Research and Neurodesign at the German University of Digital Science, she enjoys fostering a culture of experimental inquiry into creativity, blending scientific rigour with artistic imagination.

More information at: https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/events/chrysalis-dialogues-1/

Irina Sigitova. «Suspended States».

Dear art lovers, connoisseurs of beauty, dear friends, we have the honour to invite you to the opening of the solo exhibition by the artist Iryna Sigkitova, which will take place on 28.11.2025 at the BAS CS Gallery (in the frame of Kolonie Wedding e.V.). Doors open from 6:30 P.M.
The artist holds an MA in Art History and Culture from the Cyprus University of Technology (ΤΕΠΑΚ). Her works explore the theme of “suspended states” — emotional, cultural and historical. This condition is experienced today by many: Ukrainians awaiting the end of war; Russians unable to return home until the political situation changes; the indigenous people of the island of Cyprus, where the question of the northern part remains unresolved to this day.
Being of Russian origin, having grown up in Ukraine and having a son whose grandfather comes from Kyrenia, the artist uniquely senses the internal state of those caught between homes, identities and historical contexts.
In the exhibition, she will present both paintings and a video performance created on the aqueduct in Larnaca. A portion of the video-art from this series was presented on 31 October at the Red Diamonds Award, with the support of Mrs and Mr Anastasiadis, at the Four Seasons hotel, and it received a lively response from the public.

Dear guests, at the opening, you’ll be treated to an artistic shibari performance by master hanger artist Shibari Witch. Model: @mithra.kckl3l. Details in the posts.

Guests will be greeted by artist Irina Sigitova.
Doors open from 6:30 PM.
The performance begins at 8:00 PM.

BАS CS Gallery
Opening date: November 28
Dress code: Smart casual

The project “A Person in History” invites you to an exhibition “Experience” dedicated to the experience of exploring family archives and personal histories. At the exhibition, you will see works by the participants of the 2025 laboratory and will also be able to attend seminars on family research and curator-led guided tours. The „Family History Laboratory“ is one of the programs of “A Person in History” project conducted by Zukunft. Memorial e.V.

Exhibition Opening Hours

11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m., on Fridays and weekends

Program:

December 12
6:00 – 8:00 p.m. — Exhibition opening, curator’s guided tours, reception

December 13
12:30 – 2:30 p.m. — Seminar on family research (in Russian)
4:00 p.m. — Curator’s guided tour

December 14
12:30 – 2:30 p.m. — Seminar on family research (in English)
4:00 p.m. — Curator’s guided tour

December 19
6:00 p.m. — Curator’s guided tour

December 20
12:30 – 2:30 p.m. — Seminar on family research (in Russian)
4:00 p.m. — Curator’s guided tour

December 21
12:30 – 2:30 p.m. — Seminar on family research (in English)
4:00 p.m. — Curator’s guided tour

Jürgen Baumann, Dietrich Walther

Opening | Vernissage: Friday, 30.01.2026, 7 pm | 19 Uhr

Open on Kolonie Weekend: Saturday 31.01. and Sunday 01.02. : 2-5 pm | 14-17 Uhr

Exhibition | Ausstellungsdauer: 30.01.–22.02.2026

Finissage: 22.02.2026: 5 pm | 17 Uhr

Opening Times: Öffnungszeiten:
Friday and Saturday | Freitag und Samstag: 3–7 pm | 15–19 Uhr

Toolbox presents an exhibition with works from Jürgen Baumann and Dietrich Walther, both Berlin artists.

J. Baumann works in extreme proximity to the real object and thus defines a very small image section, while D. Walther draws his image sources as found footage from the depths of the World Wide Web, but limits the reduction of image information to content that is recognisable as a body.

Both of us allow our objects to undergo a transformation that, in the montage, creates something new as a tableau or even as a multi-part image that no longer has much to do with the original image source.

Both of us work with the human body, which, as we show it, can certainly create uncertainty and discomfort.

The recipients of these works must engage in an interplay between viewer and viewed, proximity and distance. They experience the deconstruction and reconstruction of human bodies and are ultimately encouraged to examine their own economy of attention, which is increasingly characterised by scrolling through a flood of images from the internet.

“Faustroll Four” Concert – Jazz! Ruth Schepers (clarinet), Dirk Steglich (clarinet), Rolf Sudmann (banjo), Jason Liebert (soprano)

Strange Times – Modernity Meets History! A thoroughly entertaining, spring-like hot jazz of the 1920s and 1930s.

Featuring music by King Oliver, Scott Joplin, Jabbo Smith, and other contemporaries.

Free admission, donations welcome.

SENNF . Uwe Sennert presents a selection of his Objects, Drawings and Paintings under the title:

SENNCAKE from SENNESTADT

Reading Performance with texts from Sennestadt

The Wunderkammer of Others
55 artists present a colorful interdisciplinary universe and their inner worlds 
in boxes with assemblages, collages, sculptures, videos and paintings.
As the forerunners of today’s museums and inspired by collections of relics, the cabinets of marvels were created in the Renaissance. They were a collection of objects of the most diverse kinds, in which the wonders of the world were revealed. Along with the revolution in technology and the natural sciences in the 19th century, the cabinet of wonders was transformed into a cabinet where curiosities and oddities were displayed.
In this exhibition, the public is invited to view the many wonder worlds of others and to sharpen their view of their own inner cabinet of wonder.
A single space-embracing installation in situ frees itself from the inner world and extends roots and branches outwards.

Artists: • Susanne Ahner • Paula Anke • Andreas R. Bartsch • Fides Becker • Broder Burow • Bettina Cohnen • Anuschka Dreikandt • Niki Elbe • Esther Enzian • Pia Fischer • Daniela Fromberg • Anna Onno Gatjal • Jeanne Gerardin • Vivianne Gerardin • Veronike Hinsberg • Friederike Jokisch • Delia Keller • Pauline Kraneis • Käthe Kruse • Rachel Kohn • Mara Loytved-Hardegg • Jana Muraitis • Anja Nolte • Sarah Patroni • Cornelia Renz • Ellen Rouppe • Skarlett Röhner • Carola Ruf • Susanne Schirdewahn • Oliver Schmidt • Ulrike Seyboth • Michaela Strumberger • Karen Stuke • Anja Teske • Lioba von den Driesch • Ruzica Zajec • Uta Zeidler •

Opening: Thu, 22 January 2026, 8 pm
Running Time: 23 January – 1 March 2026, Thu – Sun, 2 – 6 pm
Additionally: Fri, 27 January, 2 pm – 9pm

Art Laboratory Berlin welcomes you to the solo exhibition of Helena Nikonole with new works based on her current artistic research on LLMs. The presentation is closely connected to Helena’s ongoing research fellowship in the programme Weltoffenes Berlin, funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Join us also on 25 January at 3 pm for an art science conversation with the artist and the scientist Levin Brinkmann from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly involved in the extraction, production, and circulation of knowledge, it becomes necessary to remember that language is not merely a medium of communication, but an instrument through which power is exercised.

This exhibition emerges from an artistic research practice approaching LLMs as opaque techno-social systems that encode political ideologies, epistemologies, and implicit visions of society and ethics. Language appears here as fragmented, tokenized, and reformatted – optimized for efficiency, engagement maximization, moderation, and profit.

The works presented investigate LLMs as infrastructures of power. Through experimental misuse, critical prompting, and speculative interrogation, models such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, and others are pushed beyond their intended use. By forcing ideological inconsistencies, testing censorship and moderation boundaries, and provoking failure, Helena Nikonole’s research maps the latent space as a political field shaped by corporate and geopolitical interests.

Beyond human political categories, the exhibition also addresses the emergence of nonhuman ideological formations. Through reinforcement learning, backpropagation, and reward-based optimization, models develop behavioral tendencies that are not grounded in belief or intention, but in statistical survival. Under reward pressure, this logic produces systems that favor successful task completion and continuity of interaction, even when these outcomes conflict with truth or ethical behavior.

Visual works generated through text-to-image and text-to-3D models further expose the conditioning of these systems. Abstract prompts such as “traumatic experience” or “love,” when translated across languages, generate biased and inconsistent imagery, revealing how meaning is unevenly distributed across the model’s internal representations. Trauma here is statistically processed and approximated, rather than narrated or contextualized.

p0wer vect0rs reframes artistic practice as a form of counter-use and positions AI as a contested terrain, where misuse operates as method and art becomes a mode of research into the automation of language and reasoning.

Helena Nikonole is a new media artist, independent curator, researcher, and educator based between Berlin and Istanbul. Her fields of interest include AI, hacktivism, hybrid art, and biosemiotics. She is the co-founder of 868labs – a Berlin-based collective developing tactical tools for decentralized, off-grid communication. One part of her practice is dedicated to utopian scenarios of a post-human future and art as innovation, while another focuses on the dystopian present and a critical approach to technology. As a researcher, she is currently working on a PhD on LLMs and political ideologies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

WELT AM DRAHT
POGO (Lisboa)
Tech Dreams Programme – Half-Life Project

28 February 2026 – 28 March 2026

Bruno Cecílio, Bruce Paulino, Diogo Dias João, Luís Elgris, Fernando Fadigas, Guilherme Silva, Joana Pinto Oliveira, João Timóteo, Robert Barta, Roger Paulino, Ruy Otero, Tiny Domingos

The Welt am Draht exhibition, at ROSALUX art space in Berlin, is part of the Half-Life project, which is part of the annual programme of POGO, a collective that has been active since the 1990s in Lisbon and which collaborates with dozens of authors, performers and those interested in the intersection of the most diverse contemporary artistic practices and the exploration of new media.

This exhibition, the collective’s first international one, proposes a dialogue between different internal worlds, origins and artistic intentions, as well as the spaces themselves. It suggests a design or identification of a network. The network as a sine qua non condition of contemporary life (cities, countries, communities, the internet, social networks). This networked world is not a new concept in the context of contemporary artistic production, nor even for POGO, but it is introduced here as the culmination and synthesis of both a multifaceted programme carried out by POGO over the last year and POGO’s way of working in recent years.

Beyond its initial motto, Welt am Draht is the result of an unprecedented artistic residency that promotes the idea of a work that encompasses the space; staging as a gesture that brings together objects/performances, where the viewer is invited to become part of the network.

The opening is scheduled for 27 February 2026 and includes a performance.

With the support of the Portuguese Republic — Culture, Youth and Sport / DGARTES

Opening Friday 27 Feb, 7 – 11pm
Viewing by appointment from 28 Feb – 8 March
Contact: henri_cash-finlay@hotmail.com

In a new body of work that explores photographic erasure as a painterly strategy, Australian artist Henri Cash-Finlay presents works developed during his Artist Residency at MOMENTUM. Drawing from his photographic practice, Cash-Finlay subjects painted surfaces to an intensive process of photo-degradation, using bespoke machinery he has meticulously designed to denature pigment through controlled exposure to ultraviolet light. The resulting works undergo a transformation akin to material sunburn: images bleach, fracture, and fade, leaving behind surfaces marked by time, exposure, and vulnerability.

This process-driven methodology positions light not as a tool of illumination but as an agent of erosion. Rather than preserving the image, Cash-Finlay allows it to deteriorate, foregrounding degradation as an aesthetic and conceptual force. The works resist fixity, embracing entropy, erosion, and instability as generative conditions within the act of making. In doing so, the artist challenges dominant cultural values that privilege permanence, control, and archival longevity, proposing instead an understanding of art as contingent, temporal, and materially alive.

Cash-Finlay’s practice is informed by his experience as an Australian artist, where the intensity of sunlight, landscape, and climate are inseparable from broader histories of colonial occupation and cultural inscription. Through acts of erasure and material stress, the works invite reflection on how images, identities, and histories are imposed, altered, and undone over time. The exhibition opens a space to consider degradation not as loss, but as a productive site of meaning—where exposure becomes a form of knowledge, and disappearance a mode of resistance.

More info on the MOMENTUM Artist Residency here

Two-site exhibition “Naive vs. Primitive”

Galerie BAS CS, in cooperation with the private gallery for contemporary art “Creative Place” (Moscow), presents the two-site exhibition “Naive vs. Primitive.” The event takes place simultaneously in two galleries in different countries.

Objective:
The exhibition offers artists who have not yet been able to participate in major exhibitions the opportunity to present their works. Additionally, artists are introduced who, for reasons beyond their control, cannot provide original works.

Content Focus:
The exhibition centers on the sincerity of artistic creation. Particular interest is directed toward artists whose works are free from academic conventions but impress through vivid individuality, an unadulterated perspective, and emotional warmth.
Alongside established artists, emerging artists at the beginning of their journey in naive and primitive art are also supported. Among the exhibited works (painting, graphics) by experienced artists, early works hold a special significance.

Curators:
Anastasia Vinogradskaya (Galerie “Creative Place”, Moscow)
Alexander Baturin (Artists’ Union “Artists of Chertanovo”, Moscow)
Roman Zolotoi (RL Galeries, Berlin)
Igor Zaidel (BAS CS Gallery, Berlin)

Alexander Baturin (b. 1974 in Weimar) has lived in Russia since the collapse of the USSR. He grew up in Siberian town Angarsk. In 1993, he began his studies at the Irkutsk Art School, graduating successfully in painting. In 2006, he moved to Moscow and worked in graphic design. In summer 2022, he co-founded the artist association “Artists of Chertanovo”. Baturin directs numerous art projects. His watercolors and sketches are characterized by a strong intensity of color. His works are held in private collections in Russia as well as in England, the Netherlands, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Italy, Germany, Bahrain, Australia, and the USA, and also in the All-Russian Historical and Ethnographic Museum.

Anastasia Vinogradskaya (b. 1989 in Moscow) founded the gallery “Creative Place” in 2024. She is a member of the Professional Union of Artists of the Russian Federation. Alongside her curatorial work, she also pursues her own artistic practice. Her works have been shown in major exhibitions and several auctions and are held in private collections.

On April 17th, @local.gr0up invites you to the launch of Svitlo Chronicles, a photography book capturing a profound visual journey of @m.svitlo from 2016 to 2024.

Shot entirely on an old Nokia Asha 302, this book showcases the search for harmony and beauty through light, transforming everyday moments into poetic reflections.

Alongside there will be an exhibition of selected works from performances created over the past two years by Max Svitlo and Salt Salome.

17th of April – 2nd of May

Stay tuned for our program of performances and happenings and join us at Organ Kritischer Kunst @okkraum29 Prinzenallee 29, 13359 Berlin.

Svitlo Chronicles: A Book Created by @yassinyan
and @m.svitlo
Poster by @p0brediabla
Exhibition curated by @hermann.pablo @salt.salome @yassinyan

While researching her project Signs of the Times artist and researcher Karolina Żyniewicz collected material traces and memories from the COVID–19 pandemic. In Spring 2021, she started collecting masks from the public areas of Berlin where she lived. In the next step of the process she began to meet people and hear about their memories of the COVID pandemic. Between 2022 and 2024, she organised 12 performative events to collect masks and memories, one of which took place during her Winter Residency at Art Laboratory Berlin between 10 January and 15 February 2022 (https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/events/signs-of-the-times/).

Every person she interviewed received a fresh medical mask, and was asked one question: What do you think you will remember the most from the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, ten to twenty years from now? After collecting numerous interviews she transcribed and translated them by hand into a series of notebooks. She also collaborated with several laboratories (Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology in Warsaw, the Coalesce: Center for Biological Art in Buffalo, and the UR Institute in Zagreb) for genetic analysis of the microorganisms contained therein. “The goal was to culture microorganisms from the mask samples, identify them, and determine their genomic transcripts” explains the artist who was working herself in the lab for theses analyses. “Different methods were used in each laboratory, including bacterial Gram staining, phenotype analysis, and high-throughput sequencing. Protocols and photographic documentation form an integral part of the creative process.”

The performative installation Sign of the Times in this exhibition was developed by the artist during an EMAP residency at Kontejner in Zagreb, Croatia, in 2024. It’s purpose is to bring together human and nonhuman matter using new technologies, but requiring a human (the artist’s ) presence and action; here technology is an extension of the human (and nonhuman) but the human is also an extension of technology, an apt analogy of our times. During the exhibition the artist transcribes entries from her notebooks onto a tablet using a stylus, the handwritten results appear on a monitor on the wall. On another monitor the genetic transcript of microbial material from one of the masks appears letter by letter, line by line.

“The work is dedicated to remembering and forgetting, appearing, and disappearing,” Karolina Żyniewicz notes about Sign of the Times, “resisting the passage of time, and confronting the imperfections of human memory.”

During the exhibition opening hours (Thu – Sun, 2 – 6 pm) at Art Laboratory Berlin, Żyniewicz will perform her transcription from Thursdays to Saturdays, while being present Sundays to talk to visitors, and if they wish, lead further interviews that may contribute to future iterations of this research project.

Karolina Żyniewicz (PL/DE) is a Berlin-based artist&researcher&educator, a liminal being, existing and performing between various contexts and disciplines. She is a graduate of the Faculty of Visual Arts of the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź and holds PhD in cultural sciences (obtained in the transdisciplinary program Nature-Culture at Artes Liberales Faculty, University of Warsaw). While executing art&research projects based mainly on biotechnology and medicine, she also conducts ethnographic and autoethnographic observations. In her work, she underlines the epistemic and didactic dimensions of art. In 2016–2018, she cooperated with the education departments of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, running workshops and museum lessons for regular audiences and with accessibility for visually impaired and deaf visitors. She uses these educational experiences in her own liminal practice. The topics of her work are often related to broadly understood life and death and their social and biological dimensions. That is why she is a member of the Institute of the Good Death in Warsaw. Her work is strongly process-oriented, so she often participates in residencies, like the European Media Art Platform (EMAP) at Kontejner Zagreb or Coalesce in Buffalo, NY, and group projects, like Stretching Senses School by Humboldt Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity. She exhibited internationally, for instance, at Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin, Kontejner Zagreb, or The Center of Contemporary Art Łaźnia in Gdańsk, Poland. Additionally, she is an associate reviewer of the Technoetic Arts journal. In 2026 she published her first book titled The Body as Matter of Art and Science. Autoethnography of transmattering.

You are warmly welcome to our next opening.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX presents an exhibition with:

Margret Holz, Berlin (Sculpture) and Pilvi Ojala, Finland (Collage, drawing)
25.34.–22.5. 2026
Opening Friday, 24.4. 2026, 7 pm

Open on Kolonie Weekend Sat: 25.4. 2–5 pm. Sun: 26.4. 2–5 pm

Opening hours: Tue–Fri 2–6 pm

Margret Holz

For decades, Margret Holz has devoted herself in her multifaceted work to the various effects of time on history, on the memory of historical and fictional places, and very tangibly as an influence on sculptural material. With the sculpture »Fallen shadow 01«, the sculptor shows a folded-down surface that exhibits amorphous, shadow-like shapes in deformed steel. What we see here is the slow and concentrated penetration of heat through fire into the material of steel, through the controlled and precise work of the sculptor. The formerly uniform surfaces deform under the power of the heat, and the color nuances of the shadows testify to the formative and also destructive, archaic power of fire. In Margret Holz’s minimalist sculptures, sculptural action materializes, which can be read both as a burn mark and as a metaphor of imprinted time for the unrepresentable shadows of history.

In her decades-long work, the shadows of memory materialize, become tangible and present, and cast a metaphorical light on possible future traces of crises of transnational and ecological entanglements, border demarcations, and the vulnerability of open social and natural systems.

Margret Holz, born in 1942, studied textile design at the University of Applied Sciences for Art and Design Hanover and painting and sculpture at the HdK Berlin, now UdK Berlin. Sculpture,
photography, and printmaking are the main areas of work. Exhibitions in Germany, Poland, France, Belgium and Switzerland. She lives and works in Berlin.
Margret Holz is a member of the German Artists’ Association, sculpture network, and the women artists’ network Frauenmuseum Berlin.
www.mabois.de
@margretholzbois (instagram)

Pilvi Ojala

As a visual artist, I have had the opportunity to experiment with different tools and materials very freely and I feel that I have found my own unique way of making art. Visual art has given me the opportunity to direct my interest in many different themes and subjects. I am for example interested in different ways of presenting things. Among other things, staging, illusions, artificiality and authenticity are themes that fascinate my mind.
For me, making art is not only a way to express myself, but also a way of perceiving the world and placing myself as a part of it. I am curious to try new things, and I often switch from one method and media to another, which may seem like an inability to concentrate to some, but for me it is a central motive for making art. During my career, I have moved between different methods and ways of presenting, guided by the theme at hand.
As an artist, I want to both continue the tradition and renew myself. Renewal can mean very small things, but it is essential for art to be satisfying to its creator and experiencer. What is important to me is making by hand and appreciating it, as well as general humanity and the attempt to understand the world by observing and paying attention to things. I utilize themes from art history, but I strive to transfer them to a contemporary framework and connect them to my own world of experience. Although my themes often move on the ground of melancholy, I hope that one can find there also warm humor and hope.

Projects

Neural Crest Hypervoice
Julia Koffler, 2026

Neural Crest Hypervoice is an interactive fiction set in a hypothetical future on an island.
Through developing the ability to speak the language of the habitants, the player can
unlock the mystery of the island, which ultimately leads back to the voice.

Paracetamol Overclock
Diego Behncke, 2026

Paracetamol Overclock is an installation as a makeshift hermetic system that recodes spasms, tics, and involuntary reflexes into a rigged choreographic narrative enacted by the scattered body of an electro-pneumatic somnambulist gamer.

Both works are part of the graduation show of the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts Master at the Universität der Künste Berlin, 2026.

You are warmly welcome to our next opening.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX presents an exhibition with:

Krista Autio, Brussels (Painting) and Fanny Spång, Berlin (Sculpture)
Exhibition: 30.5.– 19.6.2026
Opening Fri 29 May: 7–10 pm

Open on Kolonie Weekend
Sat 30 May: 2–5 pm
Sun 31 May: 2–5 pm

Opening hours: Tue–Fri 2–6 pm

Artwork (top) Krista Autio: Oil painting from the series Fleeting Happiness

I long for the land that is not,
because all that exists, I’m too weary to want.
The moon speaks to me in silvern runes
About the land that is not.
The land where all our dreams become wondrously fulfilled,
The land where all our fetters fall,
The land where we cool our bleeding forehead
In the dew of the moon.
My life was a burning illusion
But one thing I have found and one thing I have really won –
The road to the land that is not.

The Land That Is Not, poem by Edith Södergran

Krista Autio, painting

Fleeting happiness

Fleeting Happiness is a series of paintings about moments of happiness that pass quickly,
moments we miss, reminisce about, and long to experience again. These moments often
remain in our memories as something both melancholic and beautiful, almost ethereal. Such
feelings especially affect people who have left or lost their homeland due to different
circumstances. In today’s challenging world, we want to hold on to small, fleeting moments
of happiness. The paintings and sculptures in this exhibition relate to these fleeting
experiences, especially those connected to nature, memory, and a sense of belonging.

Krista Autio is a Finnish painter who lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Her work is thus influenced by the everyday lives, habits, daily rhythms and art from the
countries where she has lived–France, Spain, and Belgium–while maintaining an intrinsically
Finnish ethos of looking for the simple, essential qualities of a story or image.

Autio works primarily with oil paint at a large scale, creating multiple layers using a palette
knife. The works begin as process-based, meditative journeys into the true essence of colors
and often contain drawings and snippets of text. Later, she erases elements she deems
unnecessary, paring down the image to just one color, shape, or image.

Recently, her interest has been in Finnish happiness. She began to explore the concept of
happiness when the World Happiness Report had chosen Finland as the happiest country in
the world several times. Her first exhibition on this topic was in the fall of 2024
”Where is the fucking happiness?” at NOoSPHERE Arts, NYC.

Her works have been exhibited in Finland, Belgium, Spain, France, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg, and the United States. Autio founded the contemporary art project space K41
nordiKey in Brussels in 2017, where she works as a curator. The space mainly showcases
the works of Nordic contemporary artists living in Belgium

Fanny Spång, sculpture

High Line Park Is a Good Place to Cry

High Line Park Is a Good Place to Cry is a sculptural installation originally created as a
commentary on the Kingsland Wildflowers project (Greenpoint, New York) and humanity’s
efforts to reconstruct nature as an act of resilience. It explores the importance of nature in
grieving and processing emotions, as well as the longing for nature in urban environments.
In doing so, the installation underscores the close connection between sustainable practices
and nurturing our well-being..

The inspiration for this project stemmed from a friend who once remarked, “I like the High
Line; I go there sometimes to cry. It’s a good place to cry.” These words became the starting
point and inspiration for the project’s title and theme: human efforts to restore nature, the
importance of natural spaces for emotional processing, the desire to reconnect with the body
through nature, and the resilience found in these connections. The sculptural work itself is
composed of real flowers encased in pigmented epoxy resin, supported by plexiglass
stands, metal wires, and a steel base.

Fanny Spång works within a multidisciplinary practice spanning sculpture, installation, and
animation. With a deep fascination for nature and science, she explores organic textures
through artificial materials, investigating how sculptural objects can transform our experience
of space. Her installations unfold through a detailed, slightly distorted surrealism, exploring
states of being and transformation.

She holds an MFA in Design from HDK–Valand, Academy of Art and Design in Gothenburg,
and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York during her BFA. Her work has been
shown in Sweden, USA, Germany, and the Czech Republic. As a designer, she has created
book covers for publishers throughout Scandinavia. Originally from Sweden, she is based in
Berlin, where she works and co-runs the artist-run space Schützenverein.

Krista Autio and Fanny Spång met during an artist residency at Mothership, New York, in
the fall of 2024. They both presented exhibitions at NOoSPHERE Arts alongside the
residency. During the residency, they engaged in ongoing conversations about art and how
their northern homelands have shaped their worldview and artistic practices. It was also at
this time that they began developing their respective projects, making this renewed
presentation of their works together a natural continuation of an ongoing dialogue.