A gentle light keeps falling through- it smells like apocalypse. Everything is what it seemed to be. But there are too many options: Enjoy. Complain. Fight. Or simply wait, until it's too late. Dive deep and have a smoke. Do you have a light?
In an expansive industrial loft that‘s usually serves as a backdrop for tv-commercials, nine artists show their work for this Berlin Gallery Weekend. Though from very different backgrounds and directions in art, they share a common interest in the traces that humans leave behind: Willfully, involuntarily, subtly - or just because of the hazard that they are. For a couple of days the space will transform into an artificial habitat for a variety of disciplines: In his sculptures, Mahdad Alizadeh plays out the expressive potential of clay to examine the fine balance between abstraction and figuration. Is that still a form or already a being? These entities will try to settle down in the apartments mock furnishing, accompanied by Alizadehs recent pastel drawings. More spacious sculptures by Leon Emanuel Blanck are juxtaposed with paintings by Franziska Klotz and the graphics of Michael Wutz, dealing with the darker aesthetic aspects of western history.
Toni Mauersberg takes a couple of steps back in the history of painting: By citing and contrasting classic masters, she wants to update the vision and develop other ways of understanding such images.
A step forward in time is suggested by the works of Sarah Oh-Mock: In her ongoing artistic project PHASO, an intelligent post-human species will document and archive what remains of the extinguished humanity.
What remains? – this is also a leading question for Bongjun Oh: His graphic works still bear witness to his strict artistic training, but now the meticulous structures are revived by decaying or dead organic materials. The problems of existence are no less that the center of David Mildners interest and artistic endeavours: they examine the possibilities of stealing or ending it, the power of an outer side. Mildner encircles these investigations in installative and graphic works like “Death Row” - an overpainted monotype showing the last words of those sentenced to death. An almost holistic approach which combines music, cuisine, painting and performance is pursued by Simon Knab - and will consequently show a surprise. Do you have a light now?
text: Alois Obstfeld
