Lives and Works in Berlin | Taryn Simon
Taryn Simon. "Chapter VII, A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters," 2008-2011. © Taryn Simon.
Taryn Simon‘s solo-exhibition, A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters (2008-2011) at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is an imposing and exhaustive investigation of eighteen diverse bloodlines and their related stories. On the surface, each chapter presents a group of stark, straightforward portraits in a seemingly confusing yet linear framework, based mostly on the bloodlines of those included (or not, for various reasons) in the Chapters, as they are called (I – XVIII).
Visually, A Living Man Declared Dead is a departure from other recent works like An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, 2007, in which Simon assumed the “the dual role of shrewd informant and collector of curiosities, compiling an inventory of what lies hidden and out-of-view within the borders of the United States,” by presenting numerous, exquisite photographs of locations or items that are generally considered off-limits, or Contraband, 2009, where Simon, who described the project as both a “performance” and “exercise in exhaustion” spent five days and nights at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Federal Inspection Site and the U.S. Postal Service International Mail Facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, systematically arranging and photographing each item seized from passengers or mail entering the U.S. from abroad. The 1,075 resulting photographs comprise a visual encyclopedia of what cannot enter the United States.
Taryn Simon. "Bird corpse, labeled as home décor, Indonesia to Miami, Florida (prohibited); Plastic pitcher of salami, Eastern Europe (9CFR.94) (prohibited)," from the series "Contraband," 2009.
Lives and Works in Berlin | Absalon at Kunst-Werke
Absalon, "Modèles des cellules habitables," 1991 Photo: Ethan Hayes-Chute.
It was back in 2005 when I first encountered the work of Absalon at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof in a exhibition called Fast Nichts – Minimal Artworks from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection (fast nichts means “almost nothing” in German). In many ways, if you’ve been to Dia: Beacon, you’ve seen a good portion of Fast Nichts — works by Carl Andre, Blinky Palermo, Bruce Nauman, and so forth. One of the (admittedly numerous) exceptions to the above claim is the work of Absalon. Somewhere in my digital archive, I still have a few the photos I took of his work, Cellule No. 2 (Protoype) (1992). While wandering through the vast halls of the Hamburger Bahnhof’s Reickhallen, I was immediately taken by the human-scale (but still quite small), white igloo-like structure that essentially has no more room than that which one might need to live. The house, or cell, or cellule, not larger than two queen-sized beds put side-by-side, consists of a desk or table, a sleeping area that is rather tomb-like, and an small stall that features a prototypical shower/toilet combination.
Absalon, "Cellule No.2.," 1992 Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof, ausgestellt 2005 in den Rieckhallen © Estate of Absalon Foto: Roman März.
The outer shape of the structure dictates the inner, and vice-versa; odd bump-outs encompass the variously-purposed areas; a visitor must most-often hunch to access some areas of the Cellule, and certainly a museum guest must not attempt to bring their backpack, or a friend, inside with them. No conjugal visits in these cell(ule)s. This same piece was also exhibited again recently as part of the extended exhibition of the Bruce Nauman’s Dream Passage exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof in 2010, along with Absalon’s short video work Bruits (1993), in which the artist screams at the camera until he no can no longer, his voice temporarily ruined. Installed at the Hamburger Bahnhof, or probably anywhere else for that matter, you can hear his pained screams much sooner than you find out what they are coming from. Certainly, most of Abalon’s other works are much much quieter in every way.
Lives and Works in Berlin: January Jones
January isn’t often a big month for art, and the same usually goes for Berlin, but this year, galleries seem to be pushing things a bit further to present exciting shows, even if a majority of them seem to have opened in November. In addition to “regular programming,” January brought the third instance of the Berlin-Paris gallery swap to town, as well as the lead into the Transmediale festival, which straddles the lines between music, performance, and art (now currently underway). But since this is actually happening in February (thankfully, it’s not as sloppy, so far, as last February), here’s a look at a few shows that eased us through the month of Janus.
3-inch chunks of month-old ice in Berlin, February 2010. Photo by Ethan Hayes-Chute
At the Schinkel Pavillion, an installation by Aaron Curry presents us with a tangle of purple and green-chromed tubes with a complicated accumulation of paper-covered cardboard chunks hanging from various points on the colorful tubing. Actually 6 separate works, they first appear somewhat haphazard and unconsidered (a cynic might view this as someone carelessly blowing their production budget on bent chromed tubes); upon further contemplation, one realizes that not only are these purple and brown colored cardboard pieces more well-crafted and considered than expected, they have tasty painted elements as well, nestled into the (silkscreened?) color swaths. Purple shapes have brown smears, brown shapes have purple smears. Painted within these smears, there are simply rendered “water droplets: condensed on the contrasting colors, as if they were made of a material cooler than the air around them, or possible to some oily substance, retaining and repelling the dew of summer mornings. The cardboard shapes recall those of Miró or Tanguy, as do many of Curry’s other sculptural works, the markings upon them suggesting edits or bandages, as do the strips of cloth tape in matching colors holding further cut-up pieces of purple or brown to the main body of these often squiggly, choppy shapes.
Lives and Works in Berlin: Berlin’s Fair Weather
The grand entrance to Art Forum Berlin at Messe Berlin. Photo: Ethan Hayes-Chute
To use a very versatile phrase, “It’s that time of year again.” In this case, we mean: it’s art fair-season in Berlin. With the 15th anniversary of the somewhat-confusingly-named Art Forum Berlin (originally named “European Art Forum Berlin”) art fair upon us this week, we are embarking upon yet another generally exhausting “big art weekends.” This one, particularly, is a real soul-suck.
The opening night crowd at Art Forum Berlin, 2010. Photo: Ethan Hayes-Chute
110 galleries from 20 countries will present their works/wares. For the last 5 years, there had been an additional curated (and themed) exhibition running along with the fair, adjacent to the 2 main halls of booths; however this year, that seems to not to be the case, and thankfully so. For the most part, it’s hard to switch gears from the browsing mode in the main halls to real’art-looking — to give the art a fair glance, especially after someone worked so hard on a presentation with a four-day lifespan. Instead of an exhibition, a new way of introducing smaller, younger galleries and artists to Berliners and visitors from afar to the Art Forum Berlin (AFB) world has been devised. It borrows an idea from the small, one-day 7×2 fair (now renamed SUNDAY), in which, at the tail-end of Gallery Weekend Berlin, seven galleries banded together to produce a somewhat off-the-cuff mini-art fair. In turn, they each invited their own counterpart gallery to exhibit and interact with in the same space (at the original 7×2, the space given was one of 7 lobbies of a high-rise on Strausberger Platz.) 7×2/SUNDAY is a fresh take on the collaboration and quid-pro-quo style used by young galleries and artists just to survive, and AFB is right to follow their lead. AFB calls this sector “focus” and sets the galleries up in the center of each hall, giving them a more equal cut of the audience. However, one does wonder, is all this space available because of a lack of participating galleries? Or something else? Esther Schipper, Galerie Neu, and Klosterfelde are sharing one booth, and these aren’t small-potatoes galleries.
Lives and Works in Berlin: The End of Temporary
On August 31, 2010, the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (TKB) will close its doors as according to the original concept. With 8 major exhibitions, 3 facades, and other projects involving over 800 artists (though, 566 can be attributed to one exhibition, it seems) throughout the 2 years of its temporary existence, the TKB’s final show is FischGrätenMelkStand, which opened on July 2, 2010, curated and designed by artist John Bock.
"FischGrätenMelkStand," installation view at Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin 2010. Photo: Jan Windszus, © Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, John Bock. Courtesy: Klosterfelde, Berlin; Anton Kern, New York.
The Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin’s mission statement was simple: to showcase Berlin-based artists in their own city; to create a program that:
Based on the success and ideas of 36 x 27 x 10, a large group exhibition conceived by Coco Kühn and Constanze Kleiner, executed in the decommissioned and slated-to-be demolished Palast der Republik in December 2005, the TKB indeed created yet another venue for artists to convene, converse and celebrate. But it’s not been without strife. In June 2009, the Artistic Advisory Board, a group responsible for appointing curators for the exhibitions, resigned rather suddenly and for a brief moment, the fate of the TKB seemed a slightly uncertain, despite having a contingency plan almost immediately. The shift that followed (large group shows, either curated or “presented” by artists — or, in the case of the Karin Sander‘s Zeigen, at least involving a multitude of artists — as opposed to solo “positions” by mid-career artists from Berlin) allowed a much more varied discussion of Berlin’s art scene by opening its doors to a wider swath of artists. Additionally the admission fees were waived for the final year, thanks to Dieter Rosenkranz and the Stiftung Zukunft Berlin, making the privately-funded museum truly free and open to anyone at any time.
Lives and Works in Berlin: BB6
Aligning smoothly with the start of Art Basel for the first time, the 6th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (BB6) opened this past week, two months later than its previous April time slot. While this meant that Berlin’s gallerists had to juggle between the openings of their own summer shows and a smooth departure to Switzerland, art buffs and collectors from abroad seem to have appreciated the synchronization of the two major art events — similar to 2007′s “Super European Art Tour”: Skulptur Projekte Münster (every 10 years) / Documenta XII (every 5 years) / 52nd Venice Biennale (every 2 years) / Art Basel 38 (every year).
While using multiple alternative exhibition venues is standard practice for the Berlin Biennial, the BB6 marks the first major departure from Berlin-Mitte and the location of its central hub, KW Institute of Contemporary Art. With six different sites, mostly located to the south in the district of Kreuzberg, the Biennial asks its audience to consider more rough and tumble situations in which to view art. Although the drive to stake out new neighborhoods is nothing new for Berlin’s art crowd, it seems this curatorial decision is fueling the discussion about the gentrification of (already hip) neighborhoods, such as Kreuzberg. Below, Art21′s Berlin columnists discuss this shift in locale among other developments in the 6th iteration of the Berlin Biennale.
