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Berlin: Biennial on the Border
Kathrin Rhomberg's work often finds her approaching borders. Most of her projects and exhibitions over the last 10 years relate to the boundaries of European identity, where she has been a staunch supporter of reexamining particular European issues of national identity, and particularly in Central Europe. With Maria Hlavajova, she's founding director of Tranzit, a long-term initiative that supports exhibition spaces and projects in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, funded primarily by the ERSTE Foundation. Through these and other projects, Rhomberg has advocated for attention to the divisions existing in European identity, and for greater attention to Central European artists and art histories.
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Beyond The Wall: Anniversary Exhibitions in Berlin
Of all Berlin's art-related nods to the fall of the Berlin Wall—scenes of the Wall were on view throughout the city-three exhibitions side-stepped the media melodrama to offer a window into East Germany's cultural life, and into the artistic community that has bloomed in Berlin since reunification.Read More
Urbanity at Art Forum Berlin
On Thursday afternoon, Art Forum Berlin, Berlin's largest art fair with 163 exhibitors, initiated its series of "Berlin Talks" in the Palais am Funkturm. The talk for this session "Does urban space need art?"-a topical conversation not only because of Berlin's obsession with public space (the result of gaping holes in the once-divided city, primarily), or because contemporary art often overlaps with Berlin's propensity for memorials. Rather, the talk reflected, self-reflexively, on the unusual format of Art Berlin Contemporary, which this year eschewed the usual booth format for a new conceit. "DEF—Drafts Establishing Futures," the exhibition's title, presents designs for future public art projects.Read More
Never Quite Filling the Void: Kader Attia
Le plein ("the complete") and le vide ("the void")—the formal tensions between presence and absence, the metaphysical distances between artist, object, and viewer—feature literally and conceptually in Kader Attia's sculpture, photography, and video. Attia emphasizes these as conceptual touchstones in his work, speaking at length about the emptiness at the center of his sculptures. "Le Plein" and "Le Vide" are also, incidentally, titles of the artists' photographs of the wall separating Israel and the West Bank (2008). The pair reappear in his installation of gaping aluminum foil figures in Ghost (2008) and in Untitled (Plastic Bags) (2008), in which ubiquitous colored plastic shopping bags stand erect on pedestals. "The emptiness of these bags, the statement of this void, is the difference between aesthetics and ethics," says Attia. Born in Paris to an Algerian family and now based in Berlin, Attia is the recent recipient with curator Laurie Ann Farrell of the Abraaj Capital Art Price in Dubai to support artists and curators who show them from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.Read More
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Mixed Media. Courtesy Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, and the artist.
Extraction, the most recent series of mixed media collages
