EXBERLINER Issue 170, April 2018

WHAT’S ON— Art
Reviews
Through Apr 14
Karla Black
Capitain Petzel, Friedrichshain
★★★✩✩
Scottish sculptor Karla Black’s otherworldly installations
and sculptures earned her a 2011 Turner Prize
nomination and the Scottish Pavillion at the 54th Venice
Biennale. Created from unconventional materials
such as cosmetic powders, cellophane and petroleum
jelly, her works are abstract and often reference the
Land Art movement. In her second exhibition at Capitain
Petzel, the few coloured balls of fluff blowing about
on the floor, barely-there smears of colour on some
windows and walls and the two doors almost apologetically
hinged onto walls in corners of the gallery initially
feel a little disappointing and frail. Black’s monumental
and immersive environments are usually more substantial
than this. However, the two tombstone-shaped
works Unlike and Paths Properly Told redeem the
show. Glass panels held upright by clay-covered floor
supports suspend circles and smears in pastel green,
pink and blue, made from paint, eyeshadow and other
cosmetics. Giving a firm nod in both form and materials
to Duchamp’s famous The Bride Stripped Bare by
Her Bachelors, Even, they solidly emphasise the shyer
hints and delicate dabs of the other works, drawing out
a much-needed narrative tension that ties the exhibition
together. — AL
Through May 6
Notes from the Underground
– Art and Alternative Music in
Eastern Europe 1968-1994
Akademie der Künste, Tiergarten
★★★★✩
Karla Black
Clumsy Socialist Realism is the first thing many associate
with art from the Eastern Bloc, but this exhibition offers
something quite different. Adapted from an exhibition
by Museum Sztuki in Poland, it presents the little-known
underground art and music scenes that managed to
flourish under communism, despite state controls
and censorship. Including painting, sculpture, collage,
photography, print, video and mixtape covers, many
never publicly exhibited before, the AdK show spans
happenings in 1960s Poland, 1980s experimental art film
from the GDR, the USSR’s Red Wave rock scene and
everything in between. The aesthetics from each period
are unexpectedly similar to those from the other side
of the Iron Curtain: characters posing in Russian artist
Evgenij Kozlov’s It’s the fashion! photo collages wouldn’t
have looked out of place in London’s Blitz Club; and
Jan Ságl’s 1970 photo of a performance by (still-active)
Prague band The Plastic People of the Universe could
have easily been shot in New York or LA. Dispelling the
myth of a creative wasteland in communist Eastern
Europe, this is an important exhibition overflowing with
stories to be told. You might want to set aside a couple
of hours to take it all in. — AL
Through Jun 10
Max Beckmann:
The World As A Stage
Museum Barberini, Potsdam
★★★★★
From his peak years as one of the Weimar Republic’s
most revered painters through his labelling as “degenerate”
by the Nazis, self-imposed exile in Amsterdam and
late-career resurgence in the US, Max Beckmann was
fascinated by theatre and the circus. It’s around this
theme that Potsdam’s Museum Barberini has assembled
over 100 of Beckmann’s paintings, drawings, sculptures
and prints, some of them rarely seen in Europe
before. In his depictions of larger-than-life figures like
Germany’s first parachuting woman (Käthe Paulus in Air
Acrobats, 1928) and nightlife scenes like cabaret dancers
crowded onto a stage in Schöneberg (Tauentzienpalast,
1924), Beckmann captures not only the drama of
the performance, but also the drawn breath and glazed
anticipation of the audience. Alongside captivating portraits
of fellow artists and performers are his prints and
drawings of Berlin life, snapping what a street photographer
might today. Walking around this vast exhibition,
it’s easy to forget its very singular theme and be
thoroughly drawn in by Beckman’s masterful draughtsmanship
and astute observations on interwar Germany,
as well as his experience as a wartime refugee. It’s a triumphant
return home for this underappreciated master
and worth the trip out to Potsdam. — AL
Max Beckmann: Apachentanz
a Walk
on the
dark side
(WT)
A PROJECT BY
YAEL RONEN & ENSEMBLE
DIRECTOR
YAEL RONEN
PREMIERES
14/APRIL
ELIZAVETA
BAM
BY DANIIL CHARMS
A PRODUCTION BY
EXIL ENSEMBLE
DIRECTOR
CHRISTIAN WEISE
ALL PLAYS WITH
ENGLISH SURTITLES
MAXIM GORKI THEATER
Am Festungsgraben 2, 10117 Berlin
STUDIO IM MAXIM GORKI THEATER
Hinter dem Gießhaus 2, 10117 Berlin
APRIL 2018
Box Office: 0049 30 20 221 115
Tickets online: www.gorki.de