berlin

Easy as Pie

31 May 2012
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One of our quickies for East-Berliners next week. The well-known graffiti collective KLUB7 have grown up, a decade after their explosion the 5 guys and 1 girl have covered so many walls, designed so many posters, outwear, books, mags… (even companies like Google or Mercedes have asked for their services) that one-another exhibition for their genuine styles in Germany can’t harm anyone can it?

KLUB7 artwork for LEVI’S – WORKSHOP 2011 Berlin
KLUB7 artwork for LEVI’S – WORKSHOP 2011 Berlin

“Easy as Pie” will be their first major exhibition of this year (they’re always showing their latest works & collaborations several times a year in Germany, when not a travel book…. it’s a street art mag) in the well-known Gestalten art space.

Their “urban pop” will be invading the central Berlin gallery to demonstrate the audacity, versatility and expertise this group have developed with chalk art… something they internalized long-ago as a good way to respond to the increasingly unfriendly urban environments packed with CCTVs and harsh local laws.

3 weeks of ephemeral creation starting next Thursday. In your smartphone agendas from today please. More info this way.

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A Maze Festival

25 April 2012
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And from a video festival …. to a game festival! Tomorrow opens this year’s edition of A Maze. Indie Connect 2012.. in Berlin again (well… the vernisasge is actually today but the exhibition & party start tomorrow!). The A Maze collective who’ve been gathering geeks & creatives for quite a few years now (Jump’ N Run, Games Culture circle, First Step Fest….etc) celebrate this year’s edition with a nice selection of nominees…

Talks! Workshops! Insights! Inspiration! and all the usual jazz (full program this way) concentrated in 2 very inspiring days right before the award show & the never-ending party. We’re pretty sure this year’s nominees are pretty anxious to know who gets those 5000€… we would.

This year’s mighty lucky finalists include…

Messhof‘s ASDFPLANE, Threaks’ Beatbuddy, our beloved Botanicula (by Amanita Design… who we interviewed last week btw), Brokenrules’ Chasing Aurora, Woolly Robot’s Flight of the fireflies, Sparpweeed’s ibb & obb, Nicolai Troshinsky’s Loop Raccord,  Ed Key and David Kanaga’s Proteus, Black Pants’ Tiny&Big and last but not least…. Bernhard Schulenburg’s Where is my heart?.

Who is it gonna be?

Oh, and because we can’t vote like on the vimeo awards (not that our votes count there anyway), maybe you’re interested in knowing that Indie Connect’s 2012 jury includes Zuraida Buter ( zo-ii / Global Game Jam ), Chris Adkins ( IGM ), Thierry Platon ( Bip Media ) and Marek Plichta ( Spaces of Play ).

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Ulrich Kochinke’s beliefs

7 April 2012
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Ulrich Kochinke (Fruehsorge gallery)
Ulrich Kochinke (Fruehsorge gallery)

One another  highlight from last weekend’s Drawing Now Parisian fair were some of the works presented by the Berlin-based contemporary drawings gallery Fruehsorge. Ulrich Kochinke pencil on paper drawings occupying big part of the gallery stand space were amongst the most captivating pieces of the event mixing good doses of realism, pop and religious elements in his drawings.

Ulrich Kochinke - Ankunft - 2010 (Image via Fruehsorge gallery)
Ulrich Kochinke - Ankunft - 2010 (Image via Fruehsorge gallery)

One of the few times his works travel & get exhibited outside Germany for the Gronau-born artist whose  catholic theology studies (just before his art studies) play a sometimes perturbing influence on his works.

Large format (almost) life-sized pencil drawings combining holy & profane, spiritual & worldly, old memories and personal impressions in highly coded compositions that examine and question the   contradiction of faith and world order.

Ulrich Kochinke - Ohne Titel - 2010 (Image via Fruehsorge gallery)
Ulrich Kochinke - Ohne Titel - 2010 (Image via Fruehsorge gallery)

Even though Drawing Now is over, you can still get to see his works @ the Berlin gallery or until may @ Meißen’s Kunstverein Meissen gallery too. Enjoy the weekend prayers!

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Blendlauf

31 December 2011
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BlendLauf by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
BlendLauf by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios

Jonas Burgert‘s new exhibition won’t open until next April @ Berlin’s BlainSouthern Gallery but 2011 saw four more theatrical pieces of this German’s attempts at explaining human life.

In its impossible quest to resolve our nature origins, he opens doors to every sphere of reason, imagination and desire. Oversized canvases are peopled with fantastical creatures of unlikely proportions. Some are towering, gigantic figures, others as small as infants. The cast includes monkeys and zebras, skeletons and harlequins, amazons, children, sometimes even the painter himself.

Spatzschlag by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
Spatzschlag by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios

A contemporary El Bosco (Bosch) with a particular passion for masks, acid colors and inexplicable baroque darkness.

According to Burgert, humanity’s need to find a meaning in existence beyond the corporeal creates an intense desire for an overarching narrative; a unifying theme that invests our lives with purpose: “In our mind, we create existences as heroes, gods or clowns. They lead unbearably loud, malicious, cynical, witty and passionate lives, in wonderfully strange or terrible places. In my art, I merely try to paint the scene of this ongoing process of debate and negotiation, with all its peculiarities.”

Affenfalle by Jonas Burgert 2010 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
Affenfalle by Jonas Burgert 2010 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios

He’s probably read Stephen King’s IT too many times when adolescent, and while his late April exhibition arrives to south-west Berlin we’ll try ourselves to find some universal meaning  in Burgert’s work. It’s “always the same painting, in the end” as he puts it, so it can’t be that complicated…

Zeit Schleicht by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
Zeit Schleicht by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
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Tous cannibales

5 May 2011
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I maybe too late to review or propose “All cannibals” as a must-visit exhibition given the number of days left (10) @ Maison Rouge, but visceral scenery is always worth visiting.

Not that I entirely agree with the cannibalism as a healthy way of feeding oneself, but it certainly has its benefits. As Claude LeviStrauss said @ La Repubblica in 1993… “Tthe simplest way to identify with another is still to eat them”. Couldn’t agree more.

Victor Brauner, Extreme Conciliation, 1941

Until May 15th la maison rouge is staging an exhibition on anthropophagy and its representations in contemporary visual art.

The exhibition’s curator has chosen pieces for the most part by young artists working independently of each other on the concept of incorporation. A body of contemporary works (photography, video, installation, sculpture, drawing and painting) finds echoes in a historic perspective (illustrations, illuminated texts, engravings and ritual objects).

Together, they show how the theme of anthropophagy has persisted and evolved through time and place. Despite being largely ignored by art critics and theorists, anthropophagy is an underlying theme of current creation, as the presence in the show of major artists from the contemporary scene confirms.

Norbert Bisky, Scapegoat, 2005,

Don’t we all absorb & construct our personality as we observe, share & experience with other people’s behaviors? Then you’re just one step away from reaching the next level.

One of Goya's War disasters.. A heroic feat! With dead men!
And if you can’t make it here in Paris, then the exhibition will continue in Berlin, from May 28th to September 18th, at Me Collectors Room Berlin (www.me-berlin.com), recently opened by the collector Thomas Olbricht. Enjoy!
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Residing at Pact Zollverein

17 April 2011
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The wonders of social networks! Diego Agulló is one of the many (hundreds… thousands… hundreds of thousands…?) of Spaniards who after graduating in Philosophy from the UNAM (Madrid) decided to live the so-called Berlin art scene and be a part of it.

He arrived to Berlin more than a lustrum ago with his video camera, and hasn’t stopped creating since. A film maker, performer, musician…. the sort of multidisciplinary artist that usually invade Berlin.

He shared his latest project with us a couple of days ago… “The Last Myself“, “A research about the tautology watching one’s own reflection in the mirror while saying one’s own name. It’s an invitation how your identity reveals itself through the echo of repetition”.

So if you’re feeling like repeating your name in front of the mirror going for a bit of self revelation you can participate  sending your own recording (more info on the project page).

And when he’s not procrastinating Agullo divides his time between Berlin and Amsterdam in collaboration with the SNDO (The school for New Dance Development) and performing in international festivals like iDans Istanbul, Plateaux Frankfurt, Context #7 HAU Berlin, Something Raw Frascati, Baku Biennale, Vilnius Biennale…

His video works have been presented in 57 Berlinale Filmfestspiele Panorama section 2007, Xtend2010 Digital Media Center Oxford, Athens video art, Experimenta Club Casa Encendida, POOL and many more.

Besides filmmaking he’s involved in god knows how many projects…. He’s a member of En Busca del Pasto (music improvisation project from Madrid), then he’s got Ellenbogen is his solo project, Paragullo… his artistic duo with  Dimitry Paranyushkin developing the survival technique called Transnomia, and a member of the monthly meeting CUE….. these Berlin artys… you know…. they lack a bit of something… but they pour a lot of creativity to the world. They’re welcome to continue doing so, just like Diego. Maybe checking his vimeo page will give u a few more insights too.

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Himmelfahrt by Santiago Ydáñez @ Invaliden1 galerie – Berlin

14 May 2010

Mr Ydáñez’s work represents another extension of the poetics on the body that have been so influentual over the past years in the international scene.  In his case… around painting – as it is in other different cases from Luc Tuysmans to Marlene Dumas – that different questions, that seem to interest critics and artists, are formulated about identity or human nature. The fact that a painted portrait is an instrument of choice has made it so that he be associated with, above all a tradition that includes Edward Munch and Francis Bacon, rather than the poetics that we are referring to now.

Santiago Ydáñez definitely offers us an extensive repertoire of screams and complaints which couldn’t seem any more Expressionist. Yet, although he presents us with extreme expressions of his own face or of other people’s faces, he does so through analysis , method, serializing, and chromatic restraint. He purposefully never lets himself be swayed by subjectivity or improvisation.

“The blending of different spiritualities, together with different bestialities can be seen as a leitmotiv in my work. I unite religious iconographies and nature, mainly fauna, motives. In this way human faces with void, mystic and deep romantic presence, share the same space with scenes taken from Natural history Museum. Sacred Art, the romanticism and the taxidermist mastery, salute each other.” Santiago Ydáñez (2009).

He’s currently exhibiting at the Berlin gallery Invaliden1 until June 5th…. you know what to do right?

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