Untitled (absence) / 
Lela Ahmadzai & Lars Bjerre / 
Curated by Anna-Lena Werner (artfridge.de)

Opening: Thursday, 5 April 2012, 19h / 
Exhibition: 6 - 28 April 2012 / 
Thursday - Sunday, 16 - 20h

Film Screening and lecture by Creative Despite War: Saturday, 21 April 2012, 19h / 
Lecture by Documenta 13 participant Koyo Kouoh: Wednesday, 25 April 2012, 19h

Savvy Contemporary, 
Richardstrasse 43/44, 
12055 Berlin-Neukölln, 
www.savvy-contemporary.com

www.ahmadzai.eu / 
www.larsbjerre.com / 
www.artfridge.de

UNTITLED (ABSENCE)

This is the common state of knowledge: German postwar art took two directions - east and west. As the Berlin-based Neue Nationalgalerie owns one of the biggest collections of DDR art, their current exhibit "Divided Heaven" ("Der geteilte Himmel") intends to juxtapose the development of both sides - balancing, questioning and comparing the museum's permanent collection. The title is borrowed by a novel, written by the east German author Christa Wolf, and it promises a strong agenda: east vs. west. The first room still keeps the promise, by spatially confronting the "abstract west" (left side) and the "figurative east" (right side). Historically seen, this is an interesting comparison, however drawing a very high 'wall' between the two. I felt that this separation was a bit dull. Some works, as Wilhelm Lachnit's "Gliederpuppe", are introduced as an eastern step to abstraction, suggesting that socialistic realism wasn't the only thing they did....

BERLIN: "DER GETEILTE HIMMEL" AT NEUE NATIONALGALERIE

 "Imagine a world of dots", Hirst once dreamed - well, here you go: On the 12th of January 2012 all eleven locations of Gagosian gallery will open the show "Spot Paintings 1986-2011", exclusively displaying the famous paintings by the YBA-artist. He is the first one to be honored with such an insanely giant solo exhibition by Gagosian. The "Spot Paintings" vary in sizes, but they typically have a white background and lots of symmetrical dots, which never repeat their colour within one work.

DAMIEN HIRST HITS THE SPOT

Adrian Ghenie (*1977, Rumania) is not an insider's tip anymore. Since he is not only represented by Plan-B in Berlin and Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles, but also by Haunch of Venison in London and Berlin, his success has become apparent now. I have seen his most recent solo-show in London, which showed large scale and masculine paintings, displaying imaginary sceneries mixed with inspirations of real characters. His works are dark and serious, sometimes wanting too much, sometimes perfectly composed.

ARTIST WATCH: ADRIAN GHENIE


Joseph Nyamwanda Jura Ondijo is a Kenian, superstitious healer, who has 9 wives, 32 children and 63 grandchildren. Latif Yahia declares to have acted as the body double of Uday Hussein. After taking Thalidomin, Dorothy Gallagher gave birth to disabled triplets. Shivdutt Yadav is alive, yet officially dead, because other Indian farmers are stealing his land. For her exhibition "A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters" Taryn Simon - a beautiful, 36-year old photographer from New York - researches tragic stories from all over the world. She collects portraits in front of neutral backgrounds, information about each individual and their "footnotes," which are items or pictures delivering further insights into their lives. These three categories are ordered in panels, and each panel-trio is ordered in chapters, making a total of 18 international stories. 
Equipped with a newspaper-sized information sheet, the visitors frequently shift between reading the indiviuals' thoroughly researched stories and examining their facial gestures, their expressions, their clothes. Almost in an autistic manner, Simon orders the protagonists in a time- and blood-line, following generations and observing their lives. Internal and external influences, as war, sickness, family fights, genetic drawbacks are sorted in periodic tables. But her work is more than a social analysis - it is sensitive, neutral and modest, not screaming for attention, but emphasizing each persons' past and possible future. And maybe just because of this comment-less neutrality, I left the museum feeling as if I had seen 18 amazing documentaries about the evolution and the repetition of humans' never-ending battle with itself. Simon asks questions that no one can answer, creating her very own mind-map: "We are all steadily heading towards death. (...) people are born and people die. The stories keep on coming. (...) I guess I am trying to organise it for myself." (Taryn Simon, Tate Interview)
See more information, a short film and more images below.

Taryn Simon - "A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters"
22nd of September 2011 - 1st of January 2012

Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin
Potsdamer Straße 50
10785 Berlin
Opening times: Tuesday - Friday 10am-6pm, Thursday to 10pm, Saturday and Sunday 11am-6pm

Related Links: www.gagosian.com/artists/taryn-simon/
The exhibition has travelled from London's Tate Modern to Berlin and will move on to New York's MoMa in January.

BERLIN: TARYN SIMON'S BLOODLINE OBSERVATIONS

Truth and fiction are pretty close when it comes to the videos of Israeli artist Omer Fast (*1972). Based on an interview with a traumatised, American drone pilot (a drone is always unmanned), Fast builds the storyboard of his video "5000 Feet is the best." He merges this documentary material with random footage showing war zones in Pakistan or Afghanistan and happy Las Vegas images - assuming the pilot's and the viewers' imaginations. Fast tricks us there - he erases reality by inventing his own, which is nonetheless true.

Another piece that the Kölnische Kunstverein displays in this solo exhibit is Fast's 2009 video "Nostalgia." The three-channel installation, again, explores reality and fiction on the example of an African-European fugitive story. Staged interview scenes, science-fiction elements and documentary material intertwine, change time and location, repeat and confuse. An absolutely challenging must-see exhibition!


OMER FAST
22nd of October to 18th of December

Kölnischer Kunstverein 
Die Brücke
Hahnenstraße 6
50667 Cologne
Opening hours: Tuesday-Friday 1 - 7 pm, Saturday and Sunday 11 am - 6 pm 
Entrance: €4,- / € 2,-

COLOGNE: OMER FAST BENDS THE TRUTH


"Thinking" - the title of the current 1-year show at Kolumba in Cologne explores contemplative occupations and its symbols via contemporary and old Christian art. How does that work? There is a focus on artists' books, on drawings and specifically on paintings and sculptures depicting Madonna with the Child. In a great example (room 21) a medieval devotional image is juxtaposed to a contemporary sound installation - an amazing experience. In comparison, a rather sad example is shown in room 6, where geometrical paintings by Rune Mields from the 1980s are positioned opposed to a 17th Century Christian calendar.
Kolumba is always torn between dynamic contemporary art and the maintenance of the old and religious. Founded as a Christian art space in 1853, Cologne's Cardinal Meisner (a strictly conservative believer) supported a complete renewal of the building's architecture and its concept in the 1990's. Since two years now, Stefan Kraus is the new museum's director carrying the weight of always creating a balance between art, Catholicism and original Roman ruins. However, apart from all their curatorial difficulties, the museum's architecture is mind-blowing! Even more then, I felt that it is a shame that these amazing spaces are not filled with more brave artistic positions and simply a better concept.
Though I believe its worth finding out yourselves. 


DENKEN (THINKING)
15th of September 2011 - 31st of August 2012

KOLUMBA
Kolumbastrasse 4
50667 Cologne
Open daily from 12-5pm, Thursdays until 7pm
Free under 18 years, 5 Euro normal, 3 Euro reduced

COLOGNE: ART AND CATHOLICISM | KOLUMBA

Huge animal faces stare at each other - all sorts of creatures united in a seemingly harmonic environment. Feeding, sharing, falling in love. Kevin Earl Taylor's (*1972, Charleston, USA) exhibition "Deviant instinct" at Circle Culture Gallery in Berlin Mitte intends to expose 'the animal within' - at least thats what the gallery states. Taylor's animals adapt human behaviour, ereasing their instincts and rather living the grace of charity. I was personally quite fascinated with the painting "The Translator," which displays a hare, a spider and an insect-eating plant. The spider translates, whereas the hare and the plant turn into dripping paint. This composition is as easy, as it is hyponotising. I don't know whether this show intends to guide to an utopia, or a dystopia, but it is definitely worth visiting and finding out yourself.
The exhibition runs until the 16th of November.


KEVIN EARL TAYLOR | DEVIANT INSTINCT
6th of September - 16th of November

CIRCLECULTURE GALLERY
Gipsstrasse 11
10119 Berlin-Mitte

BERLIN: KEVIN EARL TAYLOR AND THE EVOLUTION

Tucked away on a leafy, unassuming Kensington street is the house of Frederic Leighton, late Victorian President of the Royal Academy of Arts and the only British artist ever to have been knighted. A skilled draughtsman and elegant portraitist, Leighton was a contemporary of the pre-Raphaelites and whilst professing to be of a very different school, works such as the iconic Flaming June (1895) illustrate why his name is most commonly associated with those of Millais and Rossetti. All three were included alongside works by Oscar Wilde and William Morris as part of the excellent show about the Aesthetic movement in Britain at the V&A last autumn. The focus of the V&A show was “art for art’s sake” mantra of this group of artists and critics for whom the pursuit of beauty and the desire to surround oneself with the aesthetically pleasing was valued above all else. Nowhere is this sensibility more evident than in spectacular, Alhambra-esque Arab Hall at Leighton’s former residence. An interior oasis of sumptuous, peacock-blue Persian tiles and intricate Arabic and Venetian glasswork, the hall features a central fountain that sits beneath a high, gilded dome designed especially by Leighton’s architect, George Aitchison. Leighton was widely travelled, thanks in large part to the great wealth of his physician father, and frequently visited North Africa and the Middle East. Here he amassed a large collection of ceramics – particularly tiles, textiles and woodwork, some of which are accommodated in the Arab Hall.

Upstairs, in Leighton’s less ostentatious bedroom, the curled, sweeping forms of William Morris’ elaborate “India” wallpaper recall the sinuous lines of the mosaic detailing and Persian inscriptions below. In the large, light studio Persian rugs jostle for wall space with plaster casts of the Elgin marbles and pre-Raphaelite tableaux - his own or gifts from friends – in which the heroines of classical mythology are cast as creamy Victorian beauties, doe-eyed and porcelain skinned. The whole house reads as a reflection on the pervasive Orientalism of the Aesthetic movement, a tendency undoubtedly linked to Britain’s contemporary Imperial context, and a testament to the enduring exotic appeal of non-Western decorative arts.  


LEIGHTON HOUSE  
12 Holland Park Road
London, W14 8LZ
Open from: 10am – 5.30pm daily, closed Tuesdays
Explore the whole house with this great virtual tour here 


NOUR FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS AT LEIGHTON HOUSE MUSEUM 
OCTOBER – NOVEMBER 2011
Capitalising on this East-meets-West aesthetic, Leighton House is preparing to host the Nour Festival of Arts over the next two months. The festival features contemporary art, film, music, literature, fashion and all things cultural from the Middle East and North Africa. There is an interesting programme of talks by journalists, artists and academics and you can even take a course to learn the techniques for decorating your own, Leighton collection-inspired Ottoman plate.

MY PICK OF THE PROGRAM:
SOUND ART INSTILLATION: Seth Ayyaaz The Bird Ghost at the Zaouia
(Oct 31st- Nov 5th, free with museum entry) 8-channel sound instillation using material recorded at Sufi shrines, mosques and religious spaces in Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon. 

AMY’S LONDON | HIDDEN TREASURES: LEIGHTON HOUSE AND NOUR FESTIVAL

Greece-German sculptor Michail Pirgelis (*1976, Essen) seems to miss flying - or does he just miss sexy stewardesses? His aeronautic pieces are impressive, exposing a balance between something departed and old and something weirdly sublime. My first thought when I was confronted with the sculptures in London: How can these pieces seem so fragile? Michail places an emphasis on materiality, and specifically on its transformability. From robust to delicate and from a commidity item into an aesthetic object - the Duchamp'ian method of recontextualisation. Collaborating with emerging spaces and curatiorial groups, such as Mike Potter Projects, as well as with his settled gallery Sprüth Magers, his exciting work is definitely worth following!
For more information on Michail visit his website: www.pirgelis.com



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