There is this vague news that the Berlin Art Week is starting and the 11th Berlin Biennale is opening or might already have opened this weekend. Nobody seems to get excited and even social media is kind of down about it all. Maybe the "soft openings" are to be blamed - they don't allow for the usual bang.
Berlin Art Week goes on without an art fair to speak of (who wants to go to Positions?) and its website bores already by the look of it (that green!). It should have taken some time off to reconsider things, like that map. The virus would have been the perfect excuse to have a pause. Why didn't they take it?
And what about the Berlin Biennale packing its bags and relocate, for instance to Leipzig? Maybe there is something wrong in Berlin Feng Shui-wise. How else can we explain the phenomenon?
A Tagesspiegel review on the 11th Berlin Biennale (positive of course, who dares or cares to write out of tune?) gave me a fright. At Kunstwerke there is an "altar" of the Brazilian painter Pedro Moraleido Bernardes with neo-expressionist (ouch!) paintings of people and other creatures having violent sex. The artist committed suicide in 1999 when he was 22 (this is probably mentioned because it is supposed to heighten the authenticity of the artistic work: the suffering artist and the young genius).
In front of this altar, there is an installation by the South-Korean artist Youn-jun Tak, displaying ten crucified bodies. On top of all this, the curators managed to dig up one of the painters of the neo-expessionist "Neue Wilden" from the 1970s. It is the painter Galli. The Tagesspiegel mentions she is 74, which can be translated as a pat on the back: "Oh look, we found another woman of old age who has been forgotten!"
Anyways, I was worried that my social media friends were off the radar this year since nothing is being posted. So I asked A if he had seen more on his Instagram. But he confirmed that he didn't even detect the usual phrase #sneakpeak (sic!)
When nobody is sneak peeking anymore, I tell you, event culture is over.