What to see during Berlin Art Week
Berlin Art Week got it all: Readings, shows, performances, parties. Yesterday, the twelfth edition of the event started very promising with pineapples, cults, and butt plugs.
Food Intervention at BAW Garten
Artist and chef Caique Tizzi (Millenial, Brazilian) served, and we ate it up. For the duration of Berlin Art Week, Caique prepares high cuisine fruit bites in the BAW Garten right outside the Neue Nationalgalerie. Every day, he chooses a fruit that represents a positive quality across various cultures, starting with pineapples as a beloved welcome snack in Brazilian homes. Even if you can’t make it to one of Caique’s food interventions, there is a whole bunch of events from yoga to parties you can look forward to.
BAW Garten, Potsdamer Straße 50, 10785 Berlin
High Spirits
Art space Monpol has opened at a former industrial site of spirit production and initiated the building with a group show on spirituality. Submerged in darkness, stone and brick structures fill the large factory space like graves. Wooden boxes hover in the air as coffins. Alain Urrutia’s (Millenial, Spanish) painted black and white close-ups of Leonardo Da Vinci's woman with ermine, Queen Nefertiti and other art history celebs take up the tall walls as saints of the arts. The ceramic head of a horse lies on one of these brick graves. What an odd context for a Godfather reference.
The next room appears even taller with the small icons by Étienne Chambaud (Millenial, French. Real ones remember Étienne from the ICÔNES review). A chair is placed opposite a round table with a painting of Louis Ravené on it: The collector is contemplating one of his prized possessions, devoting his energy to his very own religion, his sacred icon. When reason and science replace God with the laws of nature, people still crave prayer.
Art has become the new deity, the highest purpose of life. Who are the priests? Where are the gatekeepers? The wealthy have created their own cult around it. The sound of crackling fire in the next room adds to the feeling that the concentric shape of the brick structures must be a pyre where the remains of the ritual were just burned. Snippets of medieval illustrations of violent folklore and torture confirm the atmosphere. I might have been trapped in a cut scene of Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
Monopol Berlin, until September 17, 2023, Provinzstraße 40-44, 13409 Berlin
Irving Ramó: Tailbone
Ken would have loved this show: so many horses. What would the great cowboy be without its loyal companion? Irving (Millenial, Equadorian) brings the ghosts of old stories of the Wild West appear as painted phantoms on the canvas, ready to take foreign land in the name of progress. The red, white, and blue of the American Dream repeat on the canvases. Infinite land expansion has swapped places with infinite economic growth. Statues monumentalize humans on horses as signs of power. But the story flipps, the horse throws the equestrian off its back. Spikes peek through the linen of the canvases, out of saddles and sandbanks. A horse spore lies on the ground underneath a painting of a horse bravely defeating its oppressor.
MONOPOL, until September 17, 2023, Provinzstraße 40-44, 13409 Berlin
Agnieszka Polska: The Thousand-Year Plan
Definitely a highlight of today was this film: Christopher-Nolanesque sci-fi bass takes turns with dreamy folklore humming. Agnieszka (Millenial, Polish) unfolds the story on two opposite screens, the protagonists’ gazes meeting in between where the viewers are turning their heads to get a sense of what is going on. An encounter between two engineers and two military rebells in the forests of Poland turns into a reflection on human consciousness: electricity running through our veins, uncertainty as hope. There is no straightforward message, you don’t need to understand the historical local context of Polish electric infrastructure development to get lost in the beauty of every single frame.
Wilhelm Hallen, until September 17, 2023, Kopenhagener Straße 60—72, 13407 Berlin
Paul McCarthy: Them Was As Is
Looks like Santa Clause was listening to Take me to the Candy Shop (2003) by 50 Cent on repeat and now he’s feeling himself a bit too much. It's the kind of show you take your grandma to and looking at Butt Plug, Carbon Fiber (2009), she will innocently ask what an odd shape that christmas tree has. Brightly colored sex toys, penises, ships, and busts fit to the titles that apparently an eight year old made up (I mean, Captain Dick Hat? Shit Face?). Formal portraits once reserved to (supposedly) honorable men becoming cottoncandy pink and the dick that one tried to compensate for is put right in your face with Dick Eye (2011-12). After seeing the bright red self-explaining monumental Santa with Butt Plug (molded from 20’ Santa with Butt Plug Foam) (2009-2012), Idk about sitting on Santa’s lap no more.
Paul (Baby Boomer, American) takes the show to another level on the next floor: He leaks Hitler's sex tape. The newer Adolf & Eva series features the historic couple making their home made videos and gigantic drawings of their very own karmasutra × tarot cards. Might have to buy some holy water after seeing this show…
Galerie Max Hetzler, until October 21, 2023, Potsdamer Straße 77-87,
Berlin Art Week 2023 takes place from 13-17 September. Explore what’s going on this week in Berlin on the website of the Berlin Art Week.
Thank you for reading! If Santa gives you shivers now (or maybe you wanna join the cult of your local super-rich), please let me know through a like, comment, or referral. :)
See you soon!!!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic