|
Berlin is fast becoming Europe’s capital of contemporary art, says local resident and art aficionado Kirsty Bell
Berlin may lack the hype of London, the tradition of Paris or the wealth of New York, but as a magnet for attracting artists from the world over, whether young and unknown or successful and well-established, Berlin has no rival. The DAAD, an artists’ residency programme established when Berlin was still a divided city to bring artists to West Berlin, has continued to flourish since the fall of the wall, attracting many of the world’s best known contemporary artists, including Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread, to spend a stint in the city.
While this provides a constant turnover of visiting talent, many of those invited, among them Tacita Dean and Mark Wallinger, have stayed on, putting down permanent roots in Berlin. Olafur Eliasson (whose spectacular ‘Weather Project’ at London’s Tate Modern in 2005 broke all attendance records attracting over 2 million visitors), has based his centre of production in Berlin since the mid 90s, with an industrious team busily building prototypes and conducting quasi-architectural experiments in a vast studio complex in a converted railway siding. Thomas Demand, whose slick photographs of suspenseful scenes elaborately constructed out of paper and cardboard were the subject of a major retrospective at New York’s MoMA last year, has his studio next door, while Turner Prize winners Wolfgang Tillmans and Simon Starling both claim Berlin as their second home.
Apart from these heavy hitters, a whole generation of younger artists are escaping the financial and competitive pressures of art capitals like London and New York, drawn by the luxuries of widely available studio and living space, notoriously low rents and the laid-back attitude that characterises the lifestyle of an ever more international group of young Berliners. The free-for-all days that followed the fall of the wall, where dilapidated buildings in ‘Mitte’, the heart of the city in former East Berlin, became home overnight to illegal bars, communal artists’ studios and squats, are now gone, however, as swathes of Mitte and the neighbouring areas Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain are renovated and crumbling facades given a fresh coat of paint. But the sheer availability of space coupled with the
unstable financial situation of the city in general keeps rents affordably low, especially for those willing to contend with coal heating (a brave undertaking given Berlin’s bitterly cold, long winters.) A young, hip, individual and international crowd has slowly moved in and taken over these neighbourhoods, and can be observed spending hours lingering over Milchkaffee in the many small smoky cafes and lounge bars that have sprung up throughout the central hubs of Hakescher Markt, Kastainenallee and Kollwitzplatz.
The paradox for Berlin as an art capital, however, is that while it is an undeniably rich centre of production, it lacks the museums, public institutions, ‘kunsthallen’ or ‘kunstvereins’ in which to display its artistic products. Exactly this paradox is at the heart of the 4th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art – a much anticipated exhibition opening on March 25th – that looks set to be the highlight of the cultural calendar. The three-strong team of curators: maverick Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (whose controversial works include a life-size sculpture of the Pope being hit by a falling meteor), Italian curator Massimiliano Gioni and writer Ali Subotnik, describe Berlin as a ‘giant art academy en plein air; an endless laboratory where there is time and space for trying things out on a semi-public scale.’ They have gathered together over 60 international artists, a third of whom are Berlin residents, to explore the particular character of the city and survey the current state of contemporary art.
The Biennial is organised under the auspices of Kunst-Werke, a non-profit experimental exhibition space housed in a vast ex-margarine factory on Auguststrasse in the centre of Mitte, but the curators have decided to add to this venue an array of other spaces, all located on the same street. This will include everything from private apartments, schools and offices to a crumbling ballroom, to emphasise the particular character of this city, with its complex contradictory past, laden with secrets and hidden stories. A city where, as they put it, ‘most interesting things happen behind closed doors.’
It is hardly surprising, given the concentration of artists living here, that a lively seam of independent activity and home-grown exhibitions has emerged to make up for the lack of institutional initiatives. There is a constant flow of temporary exhibitions organised by artists in empty shops, overlooked industrial spaces or even their own living rooms. Perhaps the most ambitious of these artist-initiated ventures took place during the last days of 2005 in the Palast der Republik, the imposing bronze glass building that once housed the East German parliament. Inside this now dilapidated, empty shell, one huge white room was cordoned off and, with a mere ten days notice, artist Thomas Scheibitz (a painter from Dresden who represented Germany in the 2005 Venice Biennale) pulled together an exhibition featuring work by over 30 of Berlin’s most celebrated artists.
The exhibition was as much a protest against the future demolition of the former ‘Palace of the People’, as a demonstration of the calibre of artworks produced in Berlin. During the week that the exhibition was open, queues formed around the block of tourists and Berliners alike anxious to have one last look at this symbol of an obsolete past, as well as admire the talents of the city’s home-grown art scene, from Eliasson’s vast glittering mirrored light ball or John Bock’s endearingly trashy assemblage titled ‘Babyshambles’ to a huge vertiginous wall painting and installation by Franz Ackermann.
Berlin’s art scene is not confined to the non-profit and experimental, however. There is also a generous collection of commercial galleries, many of which opened in the first years after the wall fell. From Max Hetzler, who relocated his gallery from Cologne to Berlin in the early 90s and shows such international stars as Jeff Koons, to Contemporary Fine Arts, established in 1992, showing Germany’s current hot painter Daniel Richter. Neugerriemschneider have cultivated a generation of younger international talent including Simon Starling and Olafur Eliasson, while Galerie Eigen + Art first opened in Leipzig shortly before the wall fell and now represents many of the much-hyped painters of the ‘New Leipzig School’, including Neo Rauch and David Schnell, whose work collectors from around the work are clamouring to get hold of. Younger galleries such as Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, which shows a clutch of vivid Berlin-based artists, or Peres Projects, a new satellite of its main gallery based in Los Angeles, round out the picture.
Visitors to the city can enjoy a show of solidarity rare amongst competitive commercial interests, when 24 of Berlin’s most significant galleries unite (for the second year running) for a jam-packed weekend on the 28th-30th April of coordinated exhibition openings and parties. This is the perfect time to see the best of Berlin’s gallery exhibitions, with many galleries choosing this weekend to showcase the highlights of their exhibition programme, from Elizabeth Peyton’s delicate portraits of androgynous youths at Neugerriemschneider, to Brazilian Beatrice Milhazes dizzying multi-coloured blossoming canvases at Galerie Max Hetzler.
The two main institutions for contemporary art, the Neue Nationalgalerie housed in Mies van der Rohe’s stunning 1965 glass pavilion, and the Hamburger Bahnhof, in a converted railway station, mount a broad range of one-person or group exhibitions as well as showing their own permanent collections, with the Hamburger Bahnhof currently temporary home to the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, an impressive collection of major late 20th century artists installed in a specially constructed annex.
An ongoing battle for funding, as well as a tangle of institutional bureaucracy, have rather troubled Berlin’s public institutions, however, and prevented them from responding quickly to the city’s fluid and informal art scene.
Instead, its vibrancy is more apparent in the creative overspill into non-fine art areas. Huge photographic murals by Wolfgang Tillmans grace the walls of the Berghain, Berlin’s most happening nightclub which kicks off every Friday night and buzzes until Monday morning. Collaborative Scandinavian duo Elmgreen and Dragset designed the set for a new opera ‘Faustus, the last night’ at the State Opera House. Extravagant multi-coloured glass lights and elegant inlaid tables and chairs designed by LA artist Jorge Pardo provide a cutting-edge aesthetic for the Bundestag’s staff canteen. A chaotic assembly of artworks, collected by the controversial wild-boy of 80s German art, the late Martin Kippenberger, cover the walls in the legendary Paris Bar in West Berlin’s Charlottenberg – a notorious hang-out for artists, politicians and B-list celebrities.
This fluidity between fine art and the everyday, and the dissolving of boundaries between home and gallery, nightclub and exhibition space, is what defines Berlin’s particularly fresh and free-flowing unpredictable character as a capital of contemporary art. The art itself, doing away with hype and flash, may seem somewhat provisional in nature and may take quite some seeking out, but it crops up in the most unexpected of places and the search is half the fun.
- Paris Bar Kantstrasse 152, 10623 Berlin-Charlottenburg, tel: +49 30 3138 052 www.parisbar.de
- Pro QM Bookshop Alte Schönhauser Strasse 48, 10119 Berlin, tel: +49 30 247 28520 www.pro-qm.de
- Weekend Club Am Alexanderplatz 5, 10178 Berlin www.week-end-berlin.de
- White Trash Fast Food Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin tel: +49 0179 473 2639 www.whitetrashfastfood.com
- Lass uns Freunde bleiben Choriner Strasse 12, 10119 Berlin, tel: +49 30 81 89 78 04
- Michael Beutler
- Nathalie Djurberg
- Martin Eder
- Isa Genzken
- Anselm Reyle
- Contemporary Fine Arts Sophienstrasse 21, 10178 Berlin, tel: +49 30 288 787 0, www.cfa-berlin.com
- Klosterfelde Zimmerstrasse 90/91, 10117 Berlin & Linienstrasse 160, 10115 Berlin, tel: +49 30 283 5305, www.klosterfelde.de
- Neugerriemschneider Linienstrasse 155, 10115 Berlin, tel: +49 30 308 72811
- Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch Rosenthalerstrasse 72, 10119 Berlin, tel: +49 30 4404 6781, www.nourbakhsch.de
- Galerie Esther Schipper Linienstrasse 85, 10119 Berlin, tel: +49 30 283 90139, www.estherschipper.de
|
