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    A Guide to Berlin Art Week Assembled By 9 of the City’s Most Plugged-In Curators

    This year’s annual Berlin Art Week is ready to open around the German capital. In a year marred by cancelations, the decentralized event is one of the few dates on the art calendar that has not been moved or erased completely.
    With a truly wide-ranging schedule of shows that occur at small project spaces, private collections, and even a nightclub, it can sometimes be hard to know where to head first. That’s why we decided to ask those who probably know best.
    Below, nine talented Berlin-based curators tell us which exhibition they are most looking forward to seeing next week and why it’s worth a look.

    Övül Ö. Durmusoglu and Joanna Warsza, Autostrada Biennale co-curators
    PICK: “Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and “Studio Berlin” at Berghain
    “Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne – The Original.” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Installation view. © Silke Briel / HKW

    “In the 1920s, the historian of art and culture Aby Warburg created his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, tracing recurring visual themes and patterns across time, from antiquity to the Renaissance to contemporary culture, setting a new understanding of art history. His way of reading and connecting images over epochs, geographies, cultures, and civilizations is still one of the richest sources for visual and media studies.
    This exhibition, realized in collaboration with the Warburg Institute in London, creates a very special occasion that brings together all panels of Warburg’s unfinished magnum opus for the first time after his death. It is a must-see for everyone who is intrigued with reimagining the world.
    Equally, Berghain has been the place bringing many scenes together in Berlin and it has been deeply missed by many in the city since its closure in March due to COVID-19 measures. The club has been engaged with realizing different visual projects before, but so far “Studio Berlin” will be the most expanded project to take place at the large former power facility, with around 80 artists involved. We will see how site-specificity will acquire new meanings in this project devoted to Berlin artists.”

    Fabian Schöneich, Curator
    PICK: Lerato Shadi’s “Maru a Pula Is a Song of Happiness” at KINDL – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst

    Lerato Shadi’s Lefa Le (2019). Photo: dewil.ch (cc by-nc-nd), 2019. Courtesy Kindl zentrum für zeitgenössische kunst.

    “I am excited to see the exhibition of Lerato Shadi at the KINDL – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst. Shadi works primarily with performance and in her works negotiates established systems of suppression and exclusion.
    So far, I only know the video work Mabogo Dinku (2019). In this piece you can see a hand gesturally moving back and forth. Shadi is singing a verse of a folk song in Setswana, her mother tongue. The song talks about the history of her people, who were excluded during apartheid and whose history is lost in the history of the colonizers.
    This is one of the reasons why she does not use a translation or subtitles. She refuses to accept the western system of historiography and language. I look forward to seeing more works and learning more from her.”

    Sam Bardaouil, 16th Lyon Biennale co-curator and affiliate curator, Gropius Bau

    Shoufay Derz, not this, not that. Installation view, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. Photo: David Brandt

    “To learn about some dynamic positions slightly far from the gallery crowds, I strongly recommend a visit to Künstlerhaus Bethanien, an artist-in-residence program with workspaces for professional artists and exhibition spaces. Their current exhibition provides insights into five diverse practices featuring installations by a selection of their 2020 resident artists: Yang Chi-Chuan, Rie Nagai, Shoufay Derz, Katsuhiko Matsubara, and Yurika Sunada.
    Yang has produced ceramic works, which take their shapes and colors from climbing gyms and discarded items of trash. Nagai created a series of paintings that evoke her experience of Berlin’s night life. Derz presents over 24 photographic prints and a new video work, deriving from her Loving the Alien performance/project. Matubara is showing 15 large-scale canvases comprised of thick layers of vibrantly hued oil paint, provoking a visceral reaction in their audience. Sunada’s installation features a slowly moving spot-lit sphere made from curved lengths of shiny steel, reflective of her experience of time during lockdown in Berlin.”

    Lisa Long, Curator, Julia Stoschek Collection

    Vivian Suter, studio view, Panajachel, Guatemala, 2018. Courtesy of the Artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brussels; House of Gaga; Karma International; and Proyectos Ultravioleta. Photo: David Regen

    “I am excited to see Vivian Suter’s exhibition at Brücke Museum. The building and interior, especially the carpets, are very particular and I’m keen to see how Suter positions her works amongst the collection, a selection made by her mother, artist Elisabeth Wild. Collages by Wild will also be in the show, and in my mind this proposes a matriarchal lineage counter to [and inserted] amongst Kirchner, Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff, Heckel, Müller, Pechstein, and Kaus.”

    Ellen Blumenstein, Curator, Artistic Director Imagine the City, Hamburg

    Michael Müller’s studio, 2020. Photo: Marco Funke. © Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin

    “Michael Müller is clearly unstoppable: Having started his career in the medium of drawing, he spent the last decade or so creating ever more complex conceptual installations crisscrossing all artistic genres, from meticulous mega-drawings to seemingly casual scribblings, from ready-made sculptures to artisanal objects, from scripted audio plays to ambitious sci-fi animations.
    This insatiable tour through artistic strategies, all of which he champions brilliantly, arrives at a new chapter: this is his first exhibition focusing on painting. One could quite rightly call this hunger for peeing on every tree presumptuous. But just as well one could follow this highly inquisitive, inventive, and clairvoyant mind expediting art way beyond what one usually gets to see.”

    “I am very much looking forward to seeing the works of indigenous Canadian artist Walter Scott, presented at the project space Ashley Berlin [full disclosure: Artnet News’s EU Editor Kate Brown is a co-organizer of the show]. I’ve been following his constructed character ‘Wendy’ for some time now; it chronicles the adventurous and tiresome reality of a young woman artist placed into a sinister, satirical, funny, and true-to-life version of today’s contemporary art world. I thought about Wendy last week when someone said that sometimes the art world can be the worst mixture of exhausting and boring at the same time. I’m excited to see how his long-term investigation into the character of Wendy and her narrative translates into a spatial setting and how this is embedded in his larger practice that looks at questions of representation and narrative construction.”

    Nadim Samman, Curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

    Katrín Inga Jónsdóttir Hjördísardóttir, still from performance, LAND SELF LOVE – your self is land of love (2020) at Gallery Gudmundsdottir. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Gudmundsdottir, Berlin.

    “I’m looking forward to seeing Katrín Inga Jónsdóttir’s solo at the newly established Gallery Gudmundsdottir in Mitte. The exact location of this dealer’s space is a secret—their address is given out only on request, but I can say that it is in an old air raid shelter. Gudmundsdottir’s all-female roster of mostly Icelandic artists is a breath of fresh air for this town, and I’m expecting something energetic and kinky from Katrin.”

    Tomke Braun, Curator Kunstverein Göttingen

    Benedikte Bjerre “My Dream Is Longer Than The Night.” Courtesy the artist and Goeben.

    “What draws me to Benedikte Bjerre’s work is her bold approach to materials and everyday objects. The Copenhagen-based artist claims My Dream Is Longer Than The Night in an exhibition at Goeben that promises to emerge from a state of mind many involuntarily inhabit in our current situation. Having previously dealt with how overconsumption increasingly disconnects time and space, the recycled reality of dreams marks a new chapter in her practice. With tongue in cheek while questioning socioeconomic conditions, Bjerre expands her sculptures into an installation inviting visitors to encounter an animated and outraged air circulation system.”

    Berlin Art Week is opening from September 9 through 13 around the city. For more information about the official program, see their website.

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    in Street Art

    Guerilla Take Over of 100 UK Billboards in Anti-Car Protest

    Environmental activist groups from the ‘Brandalism’ network have installed over 100 parody car advert posters on billboards and bus stops in England and Wales. The guerilla artworks featuring brands such as Range Rover, Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Citroen, Lamborghini and Vauxhall were installed without permission in Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, London and Exeter.
    The billboard posters criticise the car industry for misleading adverts that have driven up demand for polluting vehicles and private car use – resulting in increased carbon emissions from road transport and worsening air pollution and congestion in towns and cities.

    “Car adverts promote private car ownership as a status symbol. Themes of power, success and social status are mixed with exotic locations and empty roads to promote a myth of freedom and mobility. The resulting problems of traffic congestion, worsening air pollution and climate breakdown are left out of these glitzy ads.
    Outdoor advertising billboards are used to promote new cars to motorists stuck in traffic. It’s absurd.
    Our towns and cities have become so dominated by private cars that we’re struggling to implement sustainable alternatives as the health and social costs mount. The active promotion of polluting vehicles through advertising campaigns isn’t helping the situation. We need a cultural shift away from cars,”Peter Marcuse from Brandalism said.

    Over 30 international artists including Paul Insect, Jimmy Cauty, street artist Dr.D, Fokawolf, satirist Darren Cullen, Matt Bonner and Michelle Tylicki created 45 different artwork designs.

    One poster by Birmingham street artist Fokawolf: “Ignore the Kids, Burn the Planet’ with a picture of an SUV.

    Brandalism is an international collective of artists that challenge corporate power, greed and corruption around the world. Intervening into ad spaces that usually celebrate consumption, Brandalism use ‘subvertising’ as a lens through which we can view the intersectional social & environmental justice issues that capitalism creates.
    In January 2020, 41 artists instigated Australia’s largest unsanctioned art campaign in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in the wake of devastating wildfires and inaction on the climate crisis. In 2015, the Brandalism group replaced 600 bus stop posters in Paris ahead of the UN climate talks critiquing major polluters such as Volkswagen and Air France.
    Check out below for more photos of the advert posters.

    Another billboard featured the highly fuel inefficient BMW X5 reading “Embrace the traffic jam, Driving you into Climate Breakdown.”

    A mock Lambourghini advert by 006 – Michelle Tylicki presented the bright SUV within a hellscape of 16th century artist Hieronymus Bosch

    Artwork by Paul Insect

    Artwork by Dave Walker

    Artwork by satirist Darren Cullen

    Artwork by Hogre

    Artwork by Matt Bonner

    Artwork by Paul Insect

    Artwork by Matt Manson

    Artwork by Dr.D

    Artwork by Jimmy Cauty

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    ‘My Work Has Always Been Political, Comic—and Also Sad’: Watch Artist Eleanor Antin Bring Her Paper Dolls of Presidential Candidates to Life

    In exactly two months, Americans will vote in the presidential election, determining the social, economic, and cultural trajectory of the country for the foreseeable future.
    In a prescient artwork aptly titled Theatre of the Absurd, the multitalented artist Eleanor Antin crafted paper dolls to resemble the outrageous characters running as Republican candidates in the 2016 presidential race. In an exclusive interview with Art21, Antin laughed darkly, saying, “I thought that I was finished working with paper dolls and was on to other things until those idiotic Republican debates and that insane list of characters.”
    The installation features a diminutive Donald Trump hamming for the camera, Marco Rubio “trying to be noticed,” and Ted Cruz, who Antin describes as vampiric.
    In the video, which originally aired in 2016 as part of Art21’s Extended Play series, Antin describes the surreality of seeing her work reinvented and re-performed as life unfolds it through a contemporary lens at this moment in time “with the similarities and the ambiguities—I realize, oh my god, this is like I was prophesying!”

    Production still from the Art21 “Extended Play” film, “Eleanor Antin: Politics & Paper Dolls.” © Art21, Inc. 2016.

    Antin’s opulent photographic series “The Last Days of Pompeii,” shot in La Jolla, California, draws parallels between the picturesque ancient city that was unknowingly on the brink of ruin and that of a wealthy 21st-century enclave, blissfully ignorant to the impending climate crisis, economic collapse, and societal inequities.
    Antin’s work with paper dolls has also included creating likenesses of other artists she admires, including feminist icon Judy Chicago, the poet Jackson Mac Low, and the late painter Elizabeth Murray. Working with the figures allows Antin to keep their presence in her life, she says. “My work has always been political, has always been comic—and also sad” 
    Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series “Extended Play,” below.
    [embedded content]
    This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.

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    in Street Art

    “Two Figures Behind Glass” by Fintan Magee in Ipswich, Australia

    Australian artist Fintan Magee has recently finished another mural in Ipswich, Australia. This work depicts two rail-workers behind beveled glass. The Arctic glass pattern in the painting was common in middle-class Queensland homes in the 1960s and was used in French doors and windows.

    “Some of my earliest memories of Queensland architecture was my father’s silhouette through the glass doors when he got home. The work explores the role of de-industrialization in urban communities and on the suburban fringes of Australia. The figures in the mural appear distant, disconnected, isolated, and breaking up.”

    “As middle-class homes become increasingly out of reach for working-class Australians and lower-pay and job insecurity continues to shape how we work, this painting explores how nostalgia shapes    political views and how workers view their communities and the outside world. The work specifically looks at two rail workers from the city of Ipswich” the artist said.

    Additionally, Fintan Magee says the inspiration behind the painting was honouring those continued to work essential jobs – keeping the economy functioning and food supply moving during the coronavirus lockdown.
    Fintan Magee is a Sydney based social realist painter, specializing in large-scale murals. Magee has solidified his position as one of Australia’s leading public artists and has traveled extensively, completing projects in countries across the world, including Belarus, India, Jordan, Spain, Tahiti, USA, among many others.
    Scroll down below for more images of the stunning mural.

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    Celebrated Filmmaker Ava DuVernay Is Organizing Shows by Black Artists to Raise Money for Her Law Enforcement Accountability Project

    The award-winning activist filmmaker Ava DuVernay is collaborating with the London-based Signature African Art gallery to present two exhibitions honoring influential figures and moments in Black history.
    The exhibitions, both titled “Say My Name,” will open in London in October and Los Angeles in February to coincide with Black History Month in the UK and US.
    The London edition, which will include 13 commissioned works by Africa-based artists, including Demola Ogunajo, Ejiro Owigho, and Anthony Nsofo, honors activists such as Angela Davis and Wangari Maathai, as well as victims of police brutality, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
    The choice of 13 artists is a nod to DuVernay’s 2016 documentary, 13th, which examines race, justice, and mass incarceration in the US. 
    The film director organized the show with Signature African Art gallery director Khalil Akar. Forty percent of the sales proceeds will go to DuVernay’s Law Enforcement Accountability Project, a fund that commissions Black artists and activists to tell stories of police abuse through different art forms.
    Demola Ogunajo, Twin Angels (2012). Courtesy Signature African Art.

    “Art is a disruptive and propulsive force,” DuVernay says. “Creative expression is one of the most powerful tools that we can employ to activate and ignite change.”
    Among the artists in the show are the Nigerian painter Oluwole Omofemi, who has created a tribute to George Floyd through a series of nine paintings marking the nearly nine minutes a police officer kneeled on his neck. Each painting contains one of Floyd’s final words or phrases. Meanwhile, the Benin-based artist Moufouli Bellohas created a portrait of Breonna Taylor.
    Akar says that having African artists connect to issues in the diaspora was a chance to show that police brutality, racism, and violence are being experienced by Black people all over the world.
    “What happened to George Floyd happened in America, but it sparked protests in Europe and Africa, where similar issues are being faced,” Akar says. 
    Moufouli Bello, Sofia Doesn’t Need to Change (2019). Courtesy Signature African Art.

    Other works will engage with moments in Black British History, such as the contributions of the Windrush generation, whose members came to the UK from the Caribbean in the Postwar period to boost a depleted labor market.
    In his work, the Ouagadougou-based and self-taught artist Adjaratou Ouedraogo explores the subsequent poor treatment of the Windrush generation and its descendants, when it was revealed in 2018 that the British government wrongly detained, deported, and denied benefits to many of its members.
    But the exhibition is not just about painful moments in Black history.
    “‘Say My Name’ is not just about remembering Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and the victims of police violence,” Akar says. “It is also about recognizing the many people who have had such a positive impact on the Black community.”
    Giggs Kgole, Boshielo (2020). Courtesy Signature African Art.

    These include activists such as Angela Davis, who is captured in a portrait by artist Dennis Osakue, and the Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, the first Black woman to win a Nobel Prize.
    The 2021 Los Angeles edition of the show will include 13 new works centered on white supremacy and police brutality.
    Signature African Art was founded in 1992 in Lagos, Nigeria, and opened an outpost in London’s Mayfair neighborhood last year. 
    “Say My Name” will be on view October 27 through November 28 at Signature African Art in London.
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    See a (Literally) Underground Art Show in a Brooklyn Subway Terminal That Two MTV Employees Staged to Celebrate the Video Music Awards

    The New York subway system isn’t exactly city dwellers’ favorite place to spend time, but it does provide a vital means of getting around—and it also happens to play an integral role in the city’s creative history. From early graffiti artists to contemporary photographers, the art on display underground has often been just as exciting as what’s going on above.
    Now, to celebrate the recent Video Music Awards (which aired on Sunday, with most celebrity appearances filmed beforehand) two MTV employees decided to put on a pop-up art show celebrating BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists.
    Invigorated by the uprising in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, Antonia Baker and Rich Tu reached out to eight local artists to create work addressing themes of music, space, unity, and the future, as well as their personal experiences.
    The artists include Eva Zar, Amika Cooper, Bronson Farr, Eugenia Mello, Kervin Brisseaux, MorcosKey, and Zipeng Zhu. The installation will continue through September 6 at the Atlantic Terminal Subway Station in Brooklyn.
    See images of the pop-up exhibition and individual works, below:

    Courtesy of Eva Zar and MTV.

    Installation view of the pop-up MTV VMA art exhibition at the Barclays Center.

    Courtesy of MorcosKey and MTV.

    Installation view of the pop-up MTV VMA art exhibition at the Barclays Center.

    Courtesy of Zipeng Zhu and MTV.

    Courtesy of Amika Cooper and MTV.

    Courtesy of Bronson Farr and MTV.

    Installation view of the pop-up MTV VMA art exhibition at the Barclays Center.

    Courtesy of Kervin Brisseaux and MTV.

    Courtesy of MorcosKey and MTV.

    Courtesy of Eugenia Mello and MTV.

    Courtesy of Eva Zar and MTV.

    Courtesy of Zipeng Zhu and MTV.

    Installation view of the pop-up MTV VMA art exhibition at the Barclays Center.

    Courtesy of Kervin Brisseaux and MTV.

    Courtesy of Bronson Farr and MTV.

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