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| Monica Bonvicini |
Downstairs in the back of König Galerie there was a display of Monica Bonvicini's art work: a huge piece of jewellery with the word GUILT. Also the König employees were wearing these hats with "GUILT" printed on it. High five to merchandising! I would be interested to know about the cultural history of these kind of necklaces - I wonder if Bonvicini checked. My friend A. has a sharp mind and she has an insight in generational art work. Ah, she said, a German woman artist in her mid-50s... it's not "robust," but it's "stabil" (solid) - maybe also in capital letters: STABIL.
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| Edition Klosterfelde |
The U1 brought us to Potsdamer Straße which is even on sunny days a horribly windy street. Now the freezing cold wind was blowing and I thought I wouldn't make it around the corner of Potsdamer Straße / Schöneberger Ufer. At Helga Maria Klosterfelde Edition there was a beautiful DIY edition of 1993 by Jessica Diamon, Sol LeWitt and Lawrence Weiner. It was a pleasure to look at the wobbly geometrical figures of LeWitt - a very simple idea: draw freehand the outlines of four geometrical figures, right-handed people must use their left hand, left-handed people must use their right hand; ambidextrous people are disallowed. A perfect exercise in fragility for Monica Bonvicini?
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| Blain Southern |
At Blain Southern there was an exhibition of Marius Bercea. Nice enough paintings but it was interesting what had been done to the space: Imagine you take a great, huge space and turn it into a mediocre, normal looking space. The walls were painted grey on an average ceiling level and this way the amazing hall was reduced to average size.
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| Barbara Wien |
Last stop was Barbara Wien where Dave McKenzie had a show titled Speeches Speeches Speeches. The installations had a hint of surrealism to them. The gallerist explained the artist considered them to be visualisations of reading a book. I was debating between liking them or finding them too stylish. My friend A. came up again with a great generational theory: male artists around 40 pay so much attention to what is fashionable ("modisch"). We asked the artist himself about the many banners that he installed on the walls and that didn't really seem to fit to the installations. The printer guy suggested the material to him, the artist told us, which I found a bit unsatisfying. We had a nice talk though and A. and I told him about our blogs, indicating we write about our gallery experience. He showed interest but leaving the exhibition we realised that he hadn't even inquired after the names of our blogs. The only name he noted down was the name of a Finnish artist I mentioned, who had exhibited at the Venice Biennial and reminded me of his banners. Psychologically speaking, I find this very interesting.