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

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

„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.

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.