contemporary fine arts berlin - CFA

jonathan meese 23 Januar 1970 and georg baselitz 23 Janar 1938

The new space (but not new gallery) in berlin's mitte district, just next to museum island, opened only last year! This central location is rebuilding and becoming the hub of arts, history and culture. Just north are tons of contemporary galleries and around the corner are the big modern art and history museums.

As big as jonathan meese is in the contemporary art market, this show was not a let down. First off the space is great - expansive, light-filled, contemporary...you know, chelsea-new york-like. I have seen meese's works in person in the mix of international shows like art basel, but seeing his works in berlin, large scale, in series, alone in one big room, was quite impressive - even for an art pessimist like me. I remember when an art friend said, "hey have you checked out jonathan meese's portraits...they're great...". So I looked online that night to find pictures like this:
I didn't know whether to be scared and think they were by the devil or worship them! I ended up the same week making them my "screen savers" at my work, thus I think sending a strange message to my adult co-workers.
Living in berlin really does add to the experience...and apparently I wasn't alone. This show has captured the eyes of collectors because even on an off day seeing the show, there still were couples scouting the works. Coming from a sleepy collecting town of detroit, this was an encouraging site to see!












The show, a birthday celebration theme, also celebrated works by georg baselitz - a great balance to see one floor up. The mostly recent works by baselitz were also huge and figurative like meese's. While the titles didn't imply, I saw them as hitler-like, break dancing men - very intentionally simplistic, a little funny, and morbid; a nice dichotomy with meese and a perfect show with "same birthdays". This was a high level, big name show, with a good premise, that could have instantly gone too gimmicky but prevailed with strong, comparatively curated works!

Akos Birkás @ Eigen + Art

There was a great build up in my head prior to visiting the internationally known german gallery. Eigen+art is a gallery I associated as hosting a very particular style of new german art that I had grown to love and hate- usually pertaining to a lifeless, simplified melancholy, yet ultimately respected.
A little bit of history now. The gallery's founder and director, Gerd Harry Lybke, established the gallery in 1983 in its first location Leipzig. He gathered the growing movement of Leipzig schooled painters and began his marketing plan to draw attention to his new gallery of german artists. In 2003 he won the hearts of the well known collectors, the Rubells', who took home a hefty number of works from his gallery - enough to draw international attention and raise the prices/demand for german schooled artists. (Here's when I visited the Rubell collection)

I had discovered the gallery for myself, a few years back in a round about way of seeing one of the represented artists, martin eder, in a big ny show. It was horrible - giant puffy white kitties with young naked girls, or at least that was my first impression of disgust. I ended up leaving the gallery in ny, confused but changed. The paintings were everything that I hated in a painting - the overtlypainterly style to the grotesque, cutsy subject matter. But why do I love them now? The short, simple answer is that I look at art much differently now.

So one can see why I would be excited to visit the the gallery that I researched from Detroit. I might have been the luck of the draw but I was very disappointed. If there is one category that leaves me uninterested, it has to be a photo-realist, snap-shot show! Oh, well maybe next time....

Salomé @ Galerie Deschler

link to show

Don't Worry Be Curious @ NGBK

gallery/show info here
"...photographs, videos, and installations by 20 artists from the countries bordering the Baltic Sea, works that address the problems and fears resulting from upheavals in present-day society..." NGBK

The New Society for Fine Arts/Die Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK) is a collective or team-run gallery in the back of a popular Kreuzberg bookstore. Out of three of the shows I have seen at the gallery, so far all have explored political, global and euro-specific cultural themes. Most shows also have been video and photography based, which feels expected given the gallery's location.

Sometimes an exhibition that's foremost goal is to "teach" or "expose" becomes trapped in a lethargic, two-dimensional world. Pictures tell a literal story and videos document a direct subject. Can't there be the best of both worlds? That an informative show can still be visually engaging and challenging? This show teeteers on the edge but overall has loose curation and more direct words and pictures without room for viewer interpretation and interaction. Though the strong video presence included a projection that traversed around a small sectioned off room showing a rehearsed choir tragically singing grand songs about taxes, road repairs, economics and political statements mixed in with other silly verses like the trials of buying new underwear - all in a very public setting. Despite the luke-warm show, I respect the space's focus and intent as an educating/awareness gallery and can't really judge it for more than what it is supposed to be...after all, it is funded in part by the german government and other countries' embassies, so I can probably expect more socio-political commentary to come.

sitcomes at Ikea: Ben-Ner

Check out this artist who has dazzled jerry saltz - (Israeli born, works in ny) Guy Ben-Ner. His current video work or *sitcom*, Stealing Beauty, is staged throughout an active/open Ikea store and he even casted his family. It's really quite brilliant - I believe it is open for interpretation beyond saltz's point of view. Check out the trailer:

SOX - berlin

Although many berliners like to take their beer on the streets this isn't another casual get together but an art opening......held completely outside on the sidewalk. The gallery, SOX, is one window and one window only. No inside entrance - just a viewing window that changes once a month. More specifics here.

This month is artist Stef Heidhues with Churchill Downs.

look back- berlin fashion week

Berlin Fashion week is over now but the city has already culturally rebounded again with the Berlinale (berlin film fest...and yes we did catch a glimpse of the Rolling Stones and Martin Scorsese on the red carpet).
But back to fashion week. I have never been to ny's fashion week and only once to la's but I get the feeling that berlin falls somewhere in between in scale and prominence. Berlin has great street style and a city where the avantgarde becomes the norm. Fashion inspiration spreads from the artists and fashion risk takers here and trickels up instead of down like in other cities. You definitely don't see a lot of designer bags or glitzy pronounced labels on the general berliner. Thrift store shopping and local designer wear, infiltrates the streets. This is also a city that I don't think totally left the 80's in some ways demonstrated by its bright neon colors (new wave and graffiti inspired ) and baggy, acidwashed denim and fade haircuts - a big hit with the turkish population. This is city where sweatpants are cool and not in a ironic-mocking way - they just are! On the subway it is often hard to tell if it is just another fashion hipster or a miss-matched german with large out-of-date but now "in again" glasses. Berlin's past and present history presents its self with eastern european flair intergraded into a new expressive youth.

Here's some of the events from last week:

Beck's Fashion Experience






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Marcel Ostertag




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Sinemus







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Ideal Fashion Show (better pics here)