Exberliner issue 185, September 2019

WHAT’S ON — Art
ART NEWS
James-Simon-
Galerie open
Opened in July, the
large white angular
portico by British
architect David
Chipperfield acts
as a vast reception
area for Museum
Island and will
also hold its own
exhibitions, starting
with the current
show of plaster
casts from the 200
year-old Gipsormerei,
on until March
next year.
Käthe Kollwitz
Prize 2020
Berlin-born Timm
Ullrichs has won the
€12,000 prize for
visual art that this
year celebrates its
60th anniversary.
The artist, who
in 1961 declared
himself the world’s
“first living work
of art” will also
be awarded an
exhibition at
Akademie der
Künste in January.
Ai Weiwei
leaving Berlin
Coinciding with the
end of his visiting
professorship at
Berlin University of
the Arts, the dissident
Chinese artist and
human rights activist
has announced he
will be leaving Berlin,
his home since 2015.
He will, however,
keep his studio in the
former Pfefferberg
brewery in Prenzlauer
Berg: “My studio in
Berlin will always be
my base; I will never
give that up”.
Editor’s Choice
New indie institutions
Free from commercial and academic restraints, these new spaces
are a perfect fit for Berlin. By Anna Larkin
Unlike its museum and commercial
gallery siblings, the
independent art institution
doesn’t hold permanent collections
or sell artworks. It may charge for
entry, but might equally let you in for
free with the help of state funding,
private benefactors and corporate
sponsorship. These spaces provide
much needed platforms for independent
thought and expression. Three
new indie instis have found a perfect
home in Berlin, where audiences are
hungry for ever more outstanding art
from unusual perspectives.
Set to open on September 14 and located
in a reignited former coal power
station 30 minutes out of Südkreuz,
E-WERK Luckenwalde is the latest
to join the indie scene: following an
inaugural performance art extravaganza
in collaboration with London
performance festival Block Universe
this September 14, founders Helen
Turner and Pablo Wendel promise a
schedule packed with special events
alongside three exhibitions a year. For
their first exhibition Thames Water
(Sep 14 – Mar 28), Nicolas Deshayes’
cast iron wall sculptures will also be
powered by the reanimated power
station with heated water running
through them like radiators. The first
of their annual Flag commissions has
been won by Lucy Joyce. Her Electric
Blue (Sep 14 – Mar 28) will be visible
across Luckenwalde rooftops alongside
an exhibition of new works in one
of the three gallery spaces.
Since opening in November 2018
The Times Art Center Berlin (TACB),
a branch of China’s Guangdong
Times Museum led by Artistic Director
Xi Bei has positioned itself as an
experimental space for contemporary
Chinese art, a platform for a scene
generally underrepresented in the
West. At a time when Paris’s Centre
Pompidou and London’s Victoria and
Albert museums are opening branches
in China, it’s refreshing to see the
cultural tide flowing in the opposite
direction. This month TACB will
move to bigger premises in Mitte’s
Brunnenstraße. Spread over two
floors, the new gallery has 300sqm
of exhibition space and will open
with the group show Neither Black/
Red/Yellow Nor Woman (Sep 28 –
Jan 4). Nineteen artists will reflect
on a conceptual reenactment of the
works of three pioneer female East
Asian artists: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
(1951-82), Pan Yuliang (1895-1977) and
Trinh T. Minh-ha (b. 1952).
Funded by the benefaction of an
art-collecting German-Swiss couple,
KINDL Center for Contemporary
Art took over the former Berliner
Kindl brewery in Neukölln in 2016.
Taking in the 1920s machine house,
brew house, tower and boiler house,
it has been sensitively converted into
three floors of pristine galleries and
an atmospheric café set among the
enormous copper brewing pots. Very
importantly, in the summer there is
also a beer garden. Steered by Artistic
Director Andreas Fiedler who has
curated shows by the likes of Shirana
Shahbazi, Roman Signer and Haegue
Yang, KINDL has ushered in over
30,000 visitors in its first year. This
September it will open three shows:
Bettina Pousttchi’s Panorama (Sep 1
– May 10) consists of eight oversized
photos offering alternative views
from the boiler house window front,
artists Natalie Czech / Friederike
Feldmann (Sep 1 – Feb 2) explore the
graphic qualities of writing and Bjørn
Melhus’ video installations in Free
Update (Sep 15 – Feb 16) deconstruct
strategies of mass media.
Only time will tell if these new
spaces will stay the course, but
experimental art, sustainable energy,
and beer gardens sound very
Berlin indeed. T
E-WERK Luckenwalde Rudolf-Breitscheid-Str. 73, Luckenwalde | Times Art
Center Brunnenstr. 9, Mitte | KINDL – Center for Contemporary Art Am
Sudhaus 3, Neukölln
Jens Ziehe
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EXBERLINER 185