Exhibition Archive

Havana Berlin Stories: Stories from Havana and Berlin

Exhibition from October 16, 2023 – February 11, 2024 (first floor) // Vernissage on October 15, 2023 from 6 to 9 p.m.

Works by Eileen Farida Almarales Noy, Thomas Bratzke, Felipe Dulzaides, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Alexander Schmoeger, Marlies Pahlenberg, Hans Hs Winkler, Andrea Zaumseil, Florian Zeyfang

In the context of the extreme political upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries, the exhibition tells stories of people from both cities at different times. Stories that are hardly known or not known at all. It is about big politics, about real life and survival, about incredible biographies between fiction and reality. The artists in the exhibition live in Berlin and Havana; their biographies are often anchored in both cities.

They have all experienced the consequences of political decisions in the most diverse forms. The works shown go far beyond the reflection of individual realities; fiction mixes with documentary and interweaves to create an artistic view of the little-known history and present of two special cities and their people.

With her performative short films, the Marlies Pahlenberg invites us to ask the question "What if...?". By combining documentary and staged elements, the real and the imagined become blurred.
In the video installation ACCIDENTE, taxi drivers in Havana play the role of the father of the artist's still unborn child. In the interior spaces of the taxis, where strangers share a piece of the road with each other every day, the artist initiates a role play with the drivers to question society's image of an expectant mother, of relationships, the role of the father and the nuclear family. Intimacy and anonymity move closer together in a very confined space.

The Berlin artist Thomas Bratzke deals with his East German-Cuban childhood in his installation "Mit uns zieht die fremde Zeit / With us moves the foreign time".
Using the media of video, object, drawing and photography, the work tells of the decades-long separation and the touching story of the reunification of his German-Cuban family. Bratzke describes the powerlessness of the parents in the tension between the state authorities of Cuba and the GDR, the perspectives of the child and the present-day artist respectively.

The Cuban artist Eileen F. Almarales Noy has been living in Germany for a short time. Several of her works can be seen in the exhibition. In the photographically documented performance MIKRO D VITAMIN, she shows the extreme discrepancy between the tourists' transfigured image of Cuba and the current reality of life for Cubans. Tourists have privileges that the Cubans themselves cannot or even are not allowed to enjoy. The artist herself travelled to the popular tourist region of Varadero this year and was a welcome guest because of her foreign currency. She was able to enjoy privileges that were denied to her as a person living in Cuba. In her installations, too, she addresses the extreme living conditions in Cuba and contrasts them with her current life in Germany.

For years, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Alexander Schmoeger and Florian Zeyfang have regularly visited Casa Lamas, a private residence in Havana designed by the architect Humberto Alonso. The house was built on the threshold between the time of the Batista regime and the revolution of 1959. For the artists, the Lamas House becomes the starting point for different narratives that reflect the history, the environment, but also personal experience with the architecture and the people of Cuba. The installation "The Empty House" interprets the distinctive cubic elements from which Casa Lamas was designed. Pinhole camera photographs from various visits, together with the elements, map a space that allows the "Empty House" and its possible stories to emerge.

Andrea Zaumseil shows large-scale drawings of the sea, created a few years ago on the Malecon, the iconic waterfront in Havana. Back then, in 2015, Cuba was on the move, a transformation of Cuban society seemed tangible. Today, in 2023, Andrea Zaumseil looks back on that time with wistfulness. Today, under increasingly precarious living conditions, "departure" no longer means a reason to stay as it did back then, but to set out for a life that beckons beyond the sea. Far away.

Since 2004, Cuban artist Felipe Dulzaides has been working on the visionary architectural forms of the unfinished art school ISA in Havana. Built on a former golf course from the time of the Batista dictatorship, the ISA was to become the best art school in the country and reflect the visions of the new era and the revolution in its architecture.
Felipe Dulzaide's video "Water Runs" offers a glimpse into the breathtaking and now slowly decaying architecture. With the intervention "Water Runs", Dulzaides cleaned their now withered waterways, which were originally meant to criss-cross the grounds like life-giving veins.

"Brecht is in Havana" is a video work by Felipe Dulzaides and Hans Hs Winkler in cooperation with the Cuban actor Doimeadios Osvaldo and the boxer Radames Castillo.
Plays by Bertolt Brecht have been performed regularly in Havana since the 1960s with great success. In no other country did his plays reflect the problems at hand as much as in Cuba. Dulzaides and Winkler undertook a journey through Havana in May 2022 together with "Bertolt Brecht" to explore realities of life in Havana today.

"Café Minorista" by Hans Hs Winkler is an intervention and installation of historical posters. As a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Grupo Minorista in March 1923, it was presented at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana in 2023. The installation refers to the relationship between the Grupo Minorista in Havana and DADA Berlin. It illustrates the intersections and cultural connections since the 1920s. Both the Dadaists and the Minorists distanced themselves in their manifestos and aims from traditional art movements and bourgeois values after these, accompanied by monarchies or dictators, ended in the horrors of the First World War. From their avant-garde attitude, they developed new forms of expression: Collages, ready-mades, interventions, actions or sound poems, which had a lasting impact on art, and Fluxus, which influenced the Happenings of the 1960s and the conceptual art of our days.

Exhibition concept: Hans Hs Winkler, Thomas Bratzke, Karin Scheel
Curator: Karin Scheel

 

Renate Herter: Self-willed Bodies – Secret Territories

Exhibition from October 16, 2023 – February 11, 2024 (ground level) // Vernissage on October 15, 2023 from 6 to 9 p.m.

Renate Herter shows the female body. A body that is ageing, that is old.

Photographed beyond all romanticism, dissected into fragments, assembled into montages that refuse the superficial glance. The fascinating depictions go beyond the boundaries of classical nude photography and demand a close look from the viewer.

Renate Herter's analytical gaze shows what is, unretouched and without artificial filters. Almost macroscopically, the smallest details are visible. Although the depictions appear extremely realistic, they refuse any anatomical classification in their complexity.

One guesses at much, sees little exactly. Skin has been pushed, stretched, pressed. Wrinkles become small waves, strange little peaks, melt into mysterious patterns and shapes, join the familiar to the unfamiliar, to a new whole.

The impressively precise arrangement of the original motifs and their symmetrical mirroring creates new, almost sculptural, mystical bodies despite the compositional rigour.

 

Even though awareness of the many aspects of ageing and also the beauty of ageing has increased in recent years, the public image of old people is still little perceived or is determined by stereotypical representations. Body positivity seems to give a wide berth to the concept of ageing.

Our society is still dominated by youthfulness and beauty ideals that largely hide ageing or portray it as unattractive. Older people, especially women, are less present in the media and often only visible in clichéd portrayals.

Renate Herter's series of works "Stubborn Bodies - Secret Territories" confronts this with great self-confidence. With her montages, she goes far beyond the mere depiction of the obvious and creates highly aesthetic works that can be seen as concentrated life. With a cryptic humour, these works celebrate the feminine, life and open up a completely new perspective on the beauty of the human body.

 

5 Years of Labor M – Art Mediation at Schloss Biesdorf. A documentation.

Exhibition from June 26, 2023 to February 11, 2024 // Vernissage on June 25, 2023 from 6 to 9 pm

The exhibition looks back on five years of art mediation at Schloss Biesdorf. Under the label Labor M, access to contemporary art is offered in various formats to accompany the exhibition. These include artistic-practical projects for schools, but also workshops, guided tours and other events for people of all ages.

 

The photographies of the exhibition.

For more information CLICK into the picture

To top

Hidden Layers

Exhibition from June 26, 2023 to October 6, 2023 // Vernissage on June 25, 2023 from 6 to 9 pm

Works by Dorit Bearach, Agathe Böttcher, Brigitte Fugmann, Reinhard Jacob, Konrad Knebel, Josef Nowinka, Thomas J. Richter, Bernd Schlothauer, Hannelore Teutsch and Heidi Lamira Woitinek. Curated by Christoph Tannert

The exhibition "Hidden Layers", curated by Christoph Tannert, presents 10 isolated progressives from Berlin, five female and five male artists – all of advanced age. Brigitte Fugmann and Josef Nowinka already deceased.

The installation of this exhibition could at least extend the reception period of their works a little. After all, they are all stability factors in often overlooked, if not "hidden layers", which, due to their solidity worth preserving in the respective art segment, are the epitome of undermining common standards of today's "common sense".

They were or are all certain that the deficient, including the lack of openly circulating resources of the intellectual as well as of value orientation, will have a greater significance in art and society in the future than we have been accustomed to in past decades. Inevitably, this will make precision of statement and aesthetic pointing even more important. This spirit of the solitary struggles in "anaesthetised time" (Schlothauer) to formulate entirely free of pathos, sustainable, protecting the fragile, marked by expectation, hardly by fulfilment.

But only those who have or had clear orientations can think and live so subtly. It is not optimistic strategies that regularly consume efficiency gains through increased consumption that are appropriate, but a thorough conversion of man in humility before nature.

These artistic positions are resilient; they are the opposite of wasting sense and sensuality. They show themselves as positions free of zeitgeist gimmicks in rebelling against the recent ideologisation of social life and in insisting on intellectual alertness and steadfastness.

In this respect, this exhibition is about artistic statements that are concentrated on the self in the best sense of the word, far too little shown or even forgotten, which are contrasted by the throwaway society, but not by competition with media developments. On the contrary, this art foreshadows the fact that exploitation interests and changes in taste never allow time to stand still.

They accept the appearances and announcements of the self-appointed chiefs of the propaganda and entertainment industries with a shrug of the shoulders. Their works are committed to beauty, are an expression of work on form, but are anti-hysterical. In them lives the hope that many things can also become quite different before they end catastrophically. Because it is certain that it will.

A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.

 

The artists of the exhibition

For more information CLICK on the names

all texts: Christoph Tannert, translation: bs

 

To top

RESIDENZPFLICHT I-X / RESIDENCE OBLIGATION I-X

Exhibition from June 26, 2023 to October 6, 2023 // Vernissage on June 25, 2023 from 6 to 9 pm

Sebastian Acker, Claudio Beorchia, Andreea Chirica, Jorn Ebner, Albrecht Fersch, Manaf Halbouni, Pascal Mayet, Benedikt Stoll, Patrick Timm. A project by the artist group msk7 (Mona Babl, Kati Gausmann, Ricarda Mieth, Anja Sonnenburg).

The exhibition RESIDENZPFLICHT I-X brings together works by the artists* who lived and worked successively as artist-in-residence at 10 newly built modular refugee shelters in Berlin in 2019 and 2022.

The invited artists were each housed for 4 weeks in a mobile residential studio that changed location with each residency and was centrally placed at each of the 10 shelters for refugees. The aim of RESIDENZPFLICHT was to temporarily open up the self-contained accommodation for approaches and developments in contemporary art.

The spectrum of artistic projects ranged from temporary sculptural installations, recordings in graphic novel format, a poetic musical piece, research on the topic of nothingness, a participatory offer for filming in front of a green screen to the establishment of a temporary post office with personal letter delivery to Iran.

The exhibition RESIDENZPFLICHT I-X brings together these diverse artistic approaches of the fellows and provides insight into the different experiences during the residencies. Works created during the residency will be on display, as well as artistic works developed after the residency experience. The mobile yellow residential studio in which the artists lived and worked during their residencies will be located in the park at Schloss Biesdorf during the exhibition.

The four-week residencies were described by the fellows as very intensive and were determined by a constant confrontation with themes such as foreignness, being observed and being an observer. In the panel discussion at the exhibition's finissage, the concerns of the programme and the experiences of the participants will be discussed and critically questioned from different perspectives.

In 2018, the project RESIDENZPFLICHT was awarded 2nd prize and the realisation recommendation in the Berlin-wide open art-in-building competition for the Modular Accommodation for Refugees, offered by the State of Berlin, represented by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, commissioned by the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing (Department V) in coordination with the State Office for Refugee Affairs. RESIDENZPFLICHT was funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe and the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing.

 

To top

Point of view(s) – Sight and Direction

The artists of the exhibition

For more information tap on the photographies.

Exhibition from February 26, 2023 to June 11, 2023 // Vernissage on February 26, 2023, 06:00 to 09:00 p.m.

Works by Clemens Behr, Yvon Chabrowski, Margret Eicher, Andreas Fasbender, Jürgen Gerhard, Thomas Heidolph, Isabel Kerkermeier, Mischa Leinkauf, Miriam Lenk, Michael H. Rohde, Bodo Rott, Hansjörg Schneider, Julia Ziegler and Rolf Xago Schröder 

The exhibition "Point of view(s) – Blick und Richtung" (Sight and Direction) presents eleven contemporary artistic positions showing diverse views, points of view, perspectives and lines of sight both in aesthetic and sociopolitical terms. The works by the artists Jürgen Gerhard, Thomas Heidolph and Rolf Xago Schröder, on loan from the Beeskow Art Archive (Museum Utopia and Everyday Life – Everyday Culture and Art from the GDR), expand the theme of the exhibition with art works from the recent past.

The exhibition title plays with ambiguities. In addition to the visual allusion, it is also about artistic perspectives that enable participation in an interplay between sensual and mental experiences. The exhibited works examine various thematic fields, explore visual possibilities of representation, or experience a special staging. Installations, sculptures, paintings, works on paper, textile works, as well as video and photographs are presented.

Curated by Katia Hermann and Karin Scheel

 

Clemens Behr – Multiple viewing angles

In his abstract sculptural works, Clemens Behr processes material from the urban environment such as bulky waste and from the construction industry: old and new building materials, wooden panels, sheet metal, poles, signs, cardboard and much more. As raw materials, freed from their actual function, they are altered, combined and assembled as parts/elements of his installations, sculptures, objects and assemblages.

 

Yvon Chabrowski – Diverse perspectives and narratives of media images

Yvon Chabrowski deals with visual formulas of contemporary media which she removes from their context. This way, her works convey an awareness of ubiquitous images in the media, which seem equally familiar and foreign. Using methods of artistic research and performative strategies, Chabrowski examines circulating media images in relation to bodies and transforms them into expansive video sculptures that combining photography, installation and performative art, thus allowing different perspectives and narratives.

 

Margret Eicher – Emphasis on the digital fantasy world

Margret Eicher's large-format media tapestries, which she has been creating for about twenty years, are located at the interface of material artworks and the electronic noise of the digital sphere. Her digital montages are produced as large-format tapestries in a digi-tally operating jacquard weaving mill. The found, public photographic (pre-)image is the starting point of Eicher's visual language.

 

Andreas Fasbender – Through a child's eyes

The painting of Andreas Fasbender moves openly like jazz. Despite a certain level of structure, he works with the free forces of improvisation. Since 2002, he has been tapping into the specific creative potential of children by playfully creating the so-called Collabs together with them: collaborations using the medium of painting.

 

Isabel Kerkermeier – A new perspective on transformed objects in space

Isabel Kerkermeier assembles found objects into installations that function like floating drawings in space. As sculptures, they free themselves from the voluminosity and unfold even strongly through the volume of the space, marked and filled through the lines, colours, tension, dynamics and balance in her works.

 

Mischa Leinkauf – The hidden cityscape

Mischa Leinkauf's cross-media artistic practice consists of performative interventions, video works and photographs. The border areas between public and restricted-access or non-public spaces serve as sites for his artistic scope of action.

 

Miriam Lenk – Focus on female power

At the centre of Miriam Lenk's work stands a female archetype; tall, loud, and powerful, an icon of vitality and power emerging from nature, she is hungry for life, dynamic and flourishing. Naked and liberated, this figure seems intertwined with Eros while being centred in an environment of fertility like a goddess.

 

Michael H. Rohde – Unusual views of space

Using photography as his medium and raw material for his compositions, Michael H. Rohde creates artistic images such as photomontages and paintings. He does not con-sider himself a photographer, but a painter, whose images serve to convey a strong sense of seeing and feeling differently.

 

Bodo Rott – Research on the representation of space and perspective

Bodo Rott has been researching historical perceptions of space and representations of perspective for years, incorporating the resulting inspiration into his canvases, objects and works on paper. He combines techniques of perspective illusion, optical devices and projection machines with a very unique iconography fed by memory.

 

Hansjörg Schneider – New perspectives on the city, architecture and paper

Paper architecture usually bears a regrettable shortcoming since for any random reason, a building does not get built. It only exists on paper: wastepaper! Referencing the works of Hansjörg Schneider, paper architecture describes the fruitful connection between a built reality and a material that is as flexible as it is fragile, capable of taking on a striking quality through colouring, cutting, tearing or gluing.

 

Julia Ziegler – Moment of perception

In her work, Julia Ziegler addresses the relationship between visual and spatial experi-ences, and between illusion and material presence, while repeatedly investigating the relationship between form and sign. Her conceptual approach is open to diverse media and techniques such as drawing, painting and temporary works in situ.

 

 

 

To top

Remembering – Paintings by Georg Weise

 

Impressions from the exhibition

 

Exhibition from February 26, 2023 to June 9, 2023 // Vernissage on February 26, 2023, 06:00 to 09:00 p.m.

A solo exhibition of the Berlin painter Georg Weise is on display on the ground floor and in the café of Schloss Biesdorf. The motifs of the paintings, often anchored in the artist's childhood and youth memories, show young men, often still almost children. They stand forlornly in landscapes that refuse to be realistic, that slip away from the viewer and suggest times that have disappeared. Georg Weise's works describe a world of their own between loneliness and loss, longing and unconditional romanticism. 

 

To top

Jürgen Wittdorf (1932-2018) with Veneta Androva, Norbert Bisky, Harry Hachmeister and Bettina Semmer

Exhibition from September 05, 2022 to February 10, 2023
Vernissage on September 04, 2022, 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

In the year of his 90th birthday, Jürgen Wittdorf's works will be on display for the first time in a comprehensive retrospective at Schloss Biesdorf. As an artist in the GDR, Wittdorf was known to many as an illustrator of various books. His works, including countless masterful woodcuts, are characterised by the concept of realism of the time, but his depictions of young people initially met with little approval from the state authorities, who found this view of youth too Westernised. The latter, in turn, found themselves in Wittdorf's pictures. Later they were printed and distributed in large numbers. His own existence as a gay man is also reflected in these works.

Although homosexuality was no longer punishable by law after 1968, it was still not socially accepted, and Wittdorf himself could not admit his sexuality for a long time. From today's perspective, his works are more than a contemporary document in the field of tension between the socially fixed norms of the GDR and his very personal view of this society. Jürgen Wittdorf's artworks also stand for an artist's life that was hardly noticed after the fall of the Wall.

A large part of his extensive oeuvre can now be seen at Schloss Biesdorf, complemented by contemporary positions by Veneta Androva, Norbert Bisky, Harry Hachmeister and Bettina Semmer. In the works of these artists, themes such as gender and artificial intelligence (Veneta Androva), beauty, sexuality, violence and destruction (Norbert Bisky), (gender) identities, bodies and their attributions (Harry Hachmeister), and bodies as an element of political action (Bettina Semmer) are negotiated. The visual dialogue with these positions places Wittdorf's work in a new context, creates connections between his often only hinted at themes and current social discussions on the many facets of human individuality.

Curated by Stephan Koal and Karin Scheel.

 

From the print media:

Jürgen Wittdorf: Berlin gallery revives homoerotic art of communist era

Philip Oltermann, The Guradian, October 11, 2022

Gay struggle offers new window on Berlin Wall's fall

Claire Morand, France 24, November 1, 2022

 

To top

G I L D E D | a matter of allure

Impressions from the exhibition

June 13, 2022 to August 21, 2022
Vernissage on June 12, 2022, 6:00-9:00 p.m.

The exhibition GILDED brings together works of contemporary art that deal with the material and colour gold and examines the ideas of value and symbolic power associated with it. Is the recurring turn to a traditionally charged material in contemporary art an attempt to liberate the precious metal from its historical heritage, pomp and pathos? Is this a test of the statement "all that glitters is not gold" by transferring or shifting the ever-coveted and shiny material into other contexts? GILDED brings together artistic reactions that are associated with the material, but also with the colour. It is not so much about material fetishism or techniques, but rather about using artistic expressions and interpretations to activate very different associative spaces and trigger critical thinking. The works in this exhibition use real and artificial gold to reflect on old and new alliances and social transformation processes between communication and identification. The clichéd quotations and levels of meaning of gold(s) shift, but without overwriting history. Above all, the eternity and durability of gold is questioned. Capital investments are also critically questioned: for example, is gilded art still more valuable today and are the shiny cups and trophies made of gilded metal still ethically durable in the face of increased pressure to perform? Is it all just a refined illusion? Or does the debate and development around materialism, between ostentation and luxury, still reveal an individual change in values in a society increasingly characterised by capital and possessions?

Works by: Olivia Berckemeyer, Antje Blumenstein, Ruth Campau, Luka Fineisen, Niklas Goldbach, Eckart Hahn, David Krippendorff, Claudia Kugler, Alicja Kwade, Andréas Lang, Via Lewandowsky, Michael Müller, Sebastian Neeb, Andrea Pichl, Johanna Reich, Stéphanie Saadé, Michael Sailstorfer, Karin Sander, Henrik Strömberg, Philip Topolovac, Panos Tsagaris, Frauke Wilken, Andrea Winkler, Clemens Wolf, He Xiangyu.

Compiled by Harald F. Theiss | Curator.

Parallel to this exhibition at Schloss Biesdorf, an exhibition of the same name, also curated by Harald F. Theiss, is taking place at the Château de Nyon | Switzerland.

To top

Toni Mau (1917-1981) – Graphics from the Museum Utopie und Alltag

June 13, 2022 to August 21, 2022
Vernissage on June 12, 2022, 6:00-9:00 p.m
.

Toni Mau's graphic art is a discovery. Her silkscreen prints from the 1970s surprise and impress with poetic imagination, humour, a visible joy in experimentation and high printmaking quality. Toni from Berlin was a painter, graphic artist and sculptor. Her graphic works from the holdings of the Beeskow Art Archive are presented comprehensively for the first time in the exhibition.  In East Berlin, the artist created several building-related works, but the creative power and experimental spirit of her free works received little public recognition in the GDR. The exhibition also features building-related works by Toni Mau in recent photographs by Martin Maleschka.

The Museum Utopie und Alltag (Museum Utopia and Everyday Life) unites the Documentation Centre for Everyday Culture of the GDR in Eisenhüttenstadt and the Beeskow Art Archive institutions supported by the Oder-Spree district and funded by the state of Brandenburg.

To top

HABITATE | HABITATS

 

The artists of the exhibition

For more information tap on the exhibition photos.

Exhibition from March 13, 2022 until June 6, 2022
Soft Opening on March 13, 2022 from 2:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Exhibition with works by: Costantino Ciervo, Lioba von den Driesch, Stefan Fahrnländer, Helga Franz, Susanne Hegmann, Andreas Greiner, Christina Paetsch, Gert Pötzschig, Christine Schulz, Thomas Wrede.

Climate change, the disappearance of animal and plant species, the loss of habitats and resources are central topics of our present. Complex scientific studies on the causes and consequences of these developments explore possible fields of action to slow down these processes. Initiatives and action programmes are growing into global networks with the aim of creating a future worth living for all. The exhibition "Habitats" now contrasts the analytical view of science and the political actions and programmes with ten artistic positions; the original concept of habitat is expanded in the context of individual artistic work. In installations, video works, photographs, objects and drawings, artists locate political and economic entanglements in the complex relationship between humans and nature with themes such as loss, threat and displacement but also preservation, protection and beauty of fragile habitats, partly fragmentary, partly with pronounced intention. A large number of the works shown were newly developed for the exhibition at Schloss Biesdorf.

 

Lioba von den Driesch shows the video work "ene mene mu" in the exhibition – animations that stage the disappearance of species with regard to personal childhood memories. Creatures drawn with water on a slate disappear irretrievably as the stone heats up. (ground floor)

Andreas Greiner works with time-based sculptures involving dynamic and uncontrollable variables. His practice includes exploring possible extensions of classical parameters in sculpture. In terms of content, he focuses on the influence of anthropogenic interventions in the form and evolution of "nature". In the video work shown at Schloss Biesdorf, a digital forest is recreated with the help of a deep-learning algorithm fed with thousands of image recordings of forests. Artificial intelligence expands the human gaze and, through its specific aesthetics, enables a new reflection on the relationship between humans, nature and technology, now and in the future. (ground floor)

Stefan Fahrnländer, following the tradition of the European panel painting, works with very contemporary techniques that are committed to a discourse in which the category of the "painterly" is no longer tied back to the traditional modes of painting. Fragments of memories of the first machine age, drawn with the manifold possibilities of today's digital age, allow us to immerse ourselves in "Heimsuchung" and position marks of the shoreless in sensually perceptible forms in which the idea of the principle of home and other important current questions appear. (ground and first floor)

Christina Paetsch deals with processes of perception in the field of tension between disgust and beauty, nature and artificiality. Her works work with the principle of collage in the fields of photography, video and installation. The current works at Schloss Biesdorf deal with captivities in fictitious habitats. An installation of large-format photographs paired with a shower curtain behind which a Gugelhupf is on its last legs. Rabbits in cages, as well as desperate marshmallows behind bars. (ground and first floor)

Since 2018, photographer Thomas Wrede has been working on various series of works about the melting of Alpine glaciers. Here he is particularly interested in the glaciers covered with fleece. The large-format photographs in the octagon of Schloss Biesdorf were taken at the Rhone glacier in Switzerland with its glacier cave (2,300 m above sea level) and show exciting detailed views of the interior and exterior of the glacier. (first floor)

In her new works, Helga Franz applies the concept of habitat to economically initiated entanglements and at the same time mental localisations. Her objects and installations question the finiteness of natural resources. The artist is showing three works connected by installations. Weighing more than 100 kilos, the massive cylinders of beeswax, reminiscent of a geological drill core, rest horizontally on curved bulletproof glass in the work "Cera flava trichromatic". The kinetic installations "Honigtaucher bigelb" and "Leguminosenschreiber schwarz" work with the food sources lentils and honey, which have been used by mankind for thousands of years. (first floor)

Costantino Ciervo shows the wall piece "Mare Nostrum" and the multi-part installation with old sewing machines "Sew in the Sea". Both works deal with the death of refugees in the Mediterranean. In animated videos, a poetic text by Marco Mantello and researched data from shipwrecks are "stitched" into the surface of the sea in signal red paint. (first floor)

Susanne Hegmann is searching for traces in the habitat of her own life: in addition to enriching images and objects with personal history, she also presents in her space an associative examination of nature, art and artificiality, nature and its image – both the direct, photographic, supposedly objective one in the form of a wall-filling photo canvas, and the subjective one derived from it in the form of a drawing. Since the traces are all inscribed in surfaces, the whole room is also an experimental arrangement on the pictorial character of surfaces (and its genesis) – with a casually thrown thought-sketch on the taming of art and nature in this gallery. (first floor)

In her site-specific installations made of different materials such as metal, Plexiglas and light boxes, Christine Schulz takes up current questions about our culture. In addition to the expansive constructions, she uses self-filmed recordings and found images from the internet and feature films. Her current installation focuses on images and films of primates. (first floor)

The exhibition also includes a painting by Gert Pötzschig (on loan from the Museum Utopie und Alltag, Alltagskultur und Kunst aus der DDR, Beeskow/Eisenhüttenstadt). Gert Pötzschig's paintings are characterised by landscape and city views. The oil painting "Tagebaulandschaft 1" was painted in 1986 in the former GDR and shows the torn-up earth of an open-cast mine in a blurred, almost romantic light. (first floor)

 

The exhibition is supported by the exhibition fund Kommunale Galerien and the fund for exhibition remuneration of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

An event of the Department of Culture Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
More information on culture in Marzahn-Hellersdorf can be found on the internet at
www.kultur-marzahn-hellersdorf.de. 

To top

GUSTAVO – Screen Prints

Exhibition in the basement

On the ground floor, Schloss Biesdorf is showing screen prints by the artist GUSTAVO. These are limited and numbered prints that he is currently making from various of his paintings.

Like his large-format paintings, these are enlivened with the characteristic, colourful and bizarre figures that GUSTAVO captures on paper in absurd and comical situations. The poetic-absurd titles of the individual works are a humorous and lively bridge into GUSTAVO's magical pictorial worlds.

GUSTAVO – gracias, BERLIN!

Exhibition from November 28th, 2021 to March 4th, 2022 (on the upper floor)

50 years after his first exhibition in Berlin, Schloss Biesdorf is now showing a comprehensive retrospective of the Spanish painter. The now 82-year-old artist, known worldwide for his humorous, colour-intensive paintings, lived in Berlin for a long time and moved to Mallorca in 1995, where he opened his own gallery in the town of Capdepera while still in his 80s. His work often links Spain and Berlin, also visible in works of art in public spaces, such as the so-called GUSTAVO House in Berlin-Lichtenberg. More than 70 of his unmistakable works can be seen in Schloss Biesdorf; the grotesque figures in strange situations typical of the artist can be found in paintings, sketches, prints and can also be experienced three-dimensionally as sculptures. The poetic-absurd titles of the individual works are a humorous and lively bridge to GUSTAVO's magical pictorial worlds.

 

Sophie Kirchner – Träume aus Papier | Paper Dreams. A photographic work about the welcome money

all pictures © Sophie Kirchner. From the series: Träume aus Papier | Paper Dreams

Exhibition from November 28th, 2021 to March 4th, 2022 (on the ground floor)

What did East Germans buy with their welcome money? Photographer Sophie Kirchner explores this question in her work " Paper Dreams".

The welcome money was a subsidy of 100 DM that was granted to every citizen of the GDR entering the Federal Republic of Germany after the Wall was opened. Sophie Kirchner photographed the things bought with the money and portrayed the respective buyers. She conducted intensive conversations with the protagonists; these interviews can be heard in the exhibition. In combination with the photographs, the exhibition offers very personal memories and reflections from an East German perspective.

Werterauschen – Value Rush

Exhibition from September 5, 2021 to November 14, 2021
Opening on September 5, 2021 from 10:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. 4:00, 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. "Muted Piano Man" – Concert/Performance with Jacu

Participating artists: Sven Kalden, Michaela Schweiger, Binelde Hyrcan, Johanna Kandl, Thomas Ravens, Ingeborg Lockemann, Anna Jermolaewa, Stefan Panhans, Gunter Reski, Heidrun Holzfeind, Roswitha von den Driesch und Jens-Uwe Dyffort, Timm Ulrichs, Simon Mullan

The exhibition project "WERTERAUSCHEN" revolves around the concept of value as an economic, social and technological construction: what has value for us and how can values come into being?

The works of international artists shown in the exhibition deal with current economic value systems and ask about human decision-making possibilities within these systems. Space-filling installations, video works, paintings, photography and sound works occupy all exhibition areas of Schloss Biesdorf.

A large number of the artworks were newly created for the exhibition. Among others, the dystopian paintings of Thomas Ravrens can be seen, Sven Kalden installs a "bank room", Roswitha von den Driesch and Jens Uwe Dyffort show a sound installation made of smartphones on the subject of self-optimisation, Simon Mullan develops a space-dominating "curtain" made of work clothes. Gunter Reski will also show new works. Timm Ulrichs is represented with photographic works, Johanna Kandl with paintings.
Binelde Hyrcan will show his video Cambeck (2012), it shows four Angolan boys playing rich adults and driving around in their limousine made of sand. Stefan Panhans is represented with his video If a Store Clerk Gave Me Too Much Change from 2009. Heidrun Holzfeind describes three micro-communities in California, Austria and Slovenia in her 3-channel video installation "never neverland" from 2014.
"Go! You go!" is a video by Ingeborg Lockemann from 2017. The film deals with two particularly frequented shopping streets in Accra and London that have the same names: Oxford and Commercial Street. The film installation "Vierundzwanzig Stunden und ein Arbeiterlied" (Twenty-Four Hours and a Worker's Song) by Michaela Schweiger fragmentarily parallels the daily routines and working worlds of seven precariously employed people. Anna Jermolaewa shows her video installation "Political Extras", which describes a paid mass demonstration (on the occasion of the Moscow Biennale 2015) organised by the artist herself.

The programme accompanying the exhibition will be available on the Schloss Biesdorf website from September.

Exhibition concept by Ingeborg Lockemann, Sven Kalden, Roswitha von den Driesch and Karin Scheel.

An event of the Department of Culture Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
More information on culture in Marzahn-Hellersdorf can be found on the internet at www.kultur-marzahn-hellersdorf.de. 

 

Artists of the exhibition

For more information tap on the exhibition photos.

To top

Bangkok / Berlin – Painting by Christine Falk

Exhibition in the basement

Christine Falk's paintings in this exhibition are thematically linked to the cities of Bangkok and Berlin. In her paintings, the artist arranges the existing urban architecture, concentrating it on a clear composition. Monochrome colour surfaces, lines and structures show the essence of architectural forms. Her painterly description of the cities of Bangkok and Berlin is based on a compositional simplification of what is seen, which, despite the abstracting form, describes concrete places. The titles of the paintings build a bridge to the respective place, but even without it, the origin of the motif can be guessed.

 

To top

Zeitumstellung | Time Shift

Exhibition from March 23, 2021 till August 28th, 2021

Works from the Beeskow Art Archive in dialogue with contemporary positions

The memory of the GDR as a country of one's own origins and part of today's Federal Republic is the focus of the exhibition "Zeitumstellung". Recent socio-political developments make it clear how diverse and heterogeneous the memories of this supposedly "disappeared" country are. The interplay of selected works from the Beeskow collection with contemporary positions in this exhibition enables new dialogues, perspectives and questions. Works from the art archive will open up new perspectives on the GDR with current works by contemporary artists and expand the view beyond the historically conditioned borders. The exhibition looks back at life in the GDR and its representations, not Eastalgia, but remembrance and mediation into today.

The Beeskow Art Archive houses a special stock of artistic works from 40 years of the GDR that is of cultural and art historical interest. Owned by parties, mass organisations and state institutions of the GDR before 1990, the works have belonged to the new federal states since German reunification. The Beeskow depot holds the shares of the states of Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The exhibition "Zeitumstellung" is part of a reorientation whose aim is, among other things, to open up the collection even more to new perspectives through a contemporary approach.

Schloss Biesdorf, as the municipal gallery of the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, has already worked together with the Beeskow Art Archive in recent years. Smaller presentations from the context there and also selected positioning of individual works in the current contemporary context have been shown several times.

In this exhibition, the focus is now on works from Beeskow.

In dialogue with contemporary works, this exhibition can offer a further contribution to the discussion about the artistic heritage of the GDR. he exhibition will be accompanied by an educational programme.

Artists in the exhibition:
Joachim Bayer, Claudia Borchers, Gudrun Brüne, Manfred Butzmann, Fritz Duda, Wolfgang Eckhardt, Bernhard Franke, Friedrich-Wilhelm Fretwurst, Peter Fritz, Ellen Fuhr, Gerhard Füsser, Dieter Gantz, Albrecht Gehse, Gerd Gombert, Max Görner, Bruno Griesel, Claas Gutsche, Ruthild Hahne, Monika Hamann, Harald Hauswald, Michael Hegewald, Hermann Hensel, Eberhard Hertwig, Christa und Günter Hoffmann, Martin Hoffmann/Reinhard Zabka, Frenzy Höhne, Jo Jastram, Doris Kahane, Susanne Kandt-Horn, Doris Karras, Achim Kircher, Konrad Knebel, Kurt-Hermann Kühn, Rolf Lindemann, Harry Lüttger, Maria Mateva, Harald Metzkes, Ingeborg Michaelis, Paul Michaelis, Rainer Muhrbeck, Barbara Müller-Kageler, Gudrun Petersdorff, Mario Pfeifer, Carla Pohl, Volker Pohlenz, Inken Reinert, Lothar Rericha, Gottfried Richter, Horst Ring, Gerhard Rommel, Gerti Schlegel, Rolf Xago Schröder, Werner Schulz, Maria  Sewcz, Hartmut Staake, Daniel Theiler, Hans Ticha, Andreas Wachter, Norbert Wagenbrett, Malte Wandel, Christoph Wetzel, Walter Womacka, Axel Wunsch, Thomas Ziegler, Annett Zinsmeister, Christof Zwiener

Curated by Elke Neumann

A cooperation project between Schloss Biesdorf and the Kunstarchiv Beeskow.

 

To top

Berlin by Bus / Bangkok by Bus – Christine Falk & Alfred Banze

Exhibition from 15.11.2020 to 30.01.2021

On the way by bus in Berlin and Bangkok.
Moods and stories, captured in a mixed media installation by the artist couple Christine Falk & Alfred Banze, with paintings, films, drawings, sounds and texts.

The installation on the ground floor of Schloss Biesdorf consists of a Bangkok room and a Berlin room, in which Christine Falk's architecture-related paintings and Alfred Banze's informal drawings and videos are shown alternately. In the Bangkok film, the acoustic cacophony of the big city is replaced by music. It is inspired by Thai pop music of the 1960s, with gongs and xylophones, plucked instruments, monks' songs and street noise. The Berlin film is accompanied by original sounds and texts by Christine Falk.

Public buses are a very flexible means of transport. Buses go to places that are not in the public eye, but tell a lot about the respective city. They enable mobility for the urban periphery. In the visual arts, public space has long been recognised as a commercially threatened social cultural asset and has since been considered a broad field of experimentation.

The prelude to the exhibition was shown at the Goethe-Institut Bangkok in autumn 2019. In Berlin the exhibition was planned for March 2020, but could not be realised at that time due to corona. Much has changed in the meantime and thus realities are shown that do not exist in either city at the moment. From today's perspective, the scenes of the videos, which were recently still everyday, describe scenarios of longing.

The idea for the exhibition project was born in Bangkok during a ride in an old open collecting bus. In Berlin the artist couple uses public transport and the bicycle, the car has long been abolished.

Christine Falk and Alfred Banze met 15 years ago at the Goethe-Institut in Bangkok. Since then they have realised numerous joint projects on exoticism, globalisation and intercultural dialogue, time and again in Bangkok.

Further details: www.bangkokbybusberlin.de


An event of the Department of Culture Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
More information on culture in Marzahn-Hellersdorf can be found on the Internet at www.kultur-marzahn-hellersdorf.de.

To top

City (un)limited – the dream of your own house

Virtual tour through the exhibition

Exhibition from August 23rd, 2020 - January 30th, 2021
Opening on August 23rd, 2020, 10:00-9:00 pm
 

Works by Sigrun Drapatz/Tanja Lenuweit, Ina Geißler, Eva Kietzmann, Thomas Kilpper, Ulrike Kuschel, Fabian Lippert, REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT, Hartmut Staake, Daniele Tognozzi, Ina Wudtke

The artistic positions of the exhibition move between taking stock, analysing the political, economic and social aspects and possible future scenarios of public and private space, often in direct relation to the settlement area in the Berlin district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, which is considered the largest contiguous single house settlement in Germany.

Since the beginning of industrialisation and the associated urbanisation, the question of the distribution of living and usage spaces in the city has been raised. Originally, suburban settlements were an alternative to the catastrophic living conditions of the metropolises, especially for the lower classes of the population. They enabled people to escape from the confinement of the inner cities and to live healthily on the outskirts of the city. The gardens served as a cultivation area, they were help for self-help and at the same time compensation and supplement to the work in the city. In the meantime, the land has become speculative capital, the result is exploding land prices. Today, the expansion and densification of the single house settlement is regarded as a secure capital investment.

The artists use different media and formats to deal with usage scenarios and strategies of public and private space, present and future. Against the background of a rapidly growing city, the effects of climate change, also with regard to the role of suburban settlements, and growing socio-economic injustice, the question of land ownership in relation to the tension between the needs of the individual and those of the community is becoming increasingly urgent. Is the autonomy of individuals actually realised through (residential) property? What models are conceivable for a city worth living in this area of conflict?

Exhibition idea and concept by Sigrun Drapatz and Ina Geißler, collaboration: Tanja Lenuweit and Fabian Lippert, project management: Karin Scheel

 

Exhibition concert

September 3rd 2020, 6:00 pm "Ausfallstraße Ost // Eastern arterial road"
The musicians Zappi Werner Diermaier (Faust), Elke Drapatz, Dirk Dresselhaus and N. U. Unruh (Einstürzende Neubauten) react to the B1 main road passing the palace and communicate with the traffic sound. The experimental ensemble plays on the south terrace of Schloss Biesdorf for the guests in the park. (Event in the context of the KGB art week from August 28th, 2020 - September 6th, 2020)

 

 

Artists of the exhibition

 

Sigrun Drapatz and Tanja Lenuweit

"The Plaice in the Sea of Houses - on the nature of small suburban settlements"

 

A study of the emergence of suburban housing estates for the unemployed in the early 1930s. The artists' search for traces in the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf leads to five settlements that were built between 1932 and 1934. They map the settlements in a sea of houses, circle the historical setting, follow their development on the basis of historical documents and collect the stories and memories of the inhabitants*.

Sigrun Drapatz (*1963), lives and works in Berlin and Kiel. After completing her studies at the Berlin University of the Arts in 1998, she worked as a freelance visual artist and participated in projects and exhibitions in Germany and abroad. Together with Tanja Lenuweit she is doing research on the nature of the allotment garden.
www.sigrun-drapatz.de

Tanja Lenuweit is a cultural scientist and works in the field of historical-political education. Her research interests include migration and the culture of memory. Together with Sigrun Drapatz, she curates 2020 Block 57, an open archive on life and work in Berlin-Kreuzberg, which deals with a changing urban neighbourhood shaped by external and internal influences.

 

Ina Geißler
"Gated Unities"

Painting series (30 pieces) with cut out and 6 body fences made of black foam

 

The painted portrait series "Gated Unities" outlines the variety of motivations for owning your own home - financial freedom, independence from the favour of a landlord, self-determination through alternative forms of living or creative self-realisation are contrasted with pure possessive thinking, prestige and an overemphasis on security and independence. Ina Geißler has photographed a series of individually designed garden fences in Biesdorf. She developed body fences from these motifs and assigned them to fictitious owners. Various references between private and public are expressed. In addition, fences cut out of foam can be tried on by visitors. They offer the possibility of physically recreating "life behind the garden fence".

Ina Geißler, born 1970, lives and works in Berlin. In 2011 she realised the permanent sound installation Unterton at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, together with the architect Fabian Lippert.  Since then she has increasingly turned to interdisciplinary projects for public interior and exterior spaces, in addition to her large-format paintings and cut-outs. Ina Geißler deals with real spatial as well as socio-psychological factors that shape the exchange between private and public space.
www.inageissler.de

 

Eva Kietzmann
"Comm unity"

video installation, 2020

 

In her current video installation Eva Kietzmann deals with the construction of public space in a German single-family house settlement. She guides the audience with the camera through the place where they live and invites them to study its arrangement and architecture. At the same time the observer* does not remain unobserved. In this video the artist takes up a real experience in Biesdorf and transfers it to the place where she herself grew up. In her artistic work, Eva Kietzmann has been dealing with the privatisation of urban space and the associated aesthetic and social effects for many years. In doing so, she is always concerned with a reflection on the construction of public space and the power relations produced within it.

Eva Kietzmann, (*1977), uses different media and formats such as video, installation, drawings for her works. She studied audiovisual media, artistic work in public space and information science in Offenbach and Berlin. From 2009 to 2016 she worked with Petra Kübert as a duo on the staging of public spaces and image production of the city. She regularly takes part in exhibitions in Germany and abroad and has received various grants.
www.evakietztmann.net

 

Thomas Kilpper
"Commune of B(iesdorf)"

Woodcut in multiplex birch, printing ink, 2020

 

In his woodcut Kommune B(iesdorf) Thomas Kilpper gathers a wide variety of protagonists of revolutionary or alternative forms of life and work from the last 200 years. Emancipatory movements and ideas repeatedly collide with ossified structures of society. Experiments to change ways of life are thrown back, fail or remain minoritarian. And yet: change is permanent. The way we live today will not remain the same: The social development process will continue.
The birchwood panels used by Kilpper are recycled material from his floor work Spuren des Krieges (Traces of War) for the exhibition VERMISST Der Turm der blauen Pferde (Missing the Tower of the Blue Horses), which took place in Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne in spring 2017 and which focused on the lost painting by Franz Marc, once stigmatised as "degenerate". Kilpper had a modern 60-tonne Leopard II tank of the German armed forces driven over the wood, so that its chain pattern was imprinted in it, which contrasted with war glorifying quotations from Marc's field letters. For Kommune B(iesdorf), Kilpper turned the plates over and reworked them, but the reverse side is visible as a fragment and included in the new work.

Thomas Kilpper, (*1956), is an artist and has lived in Berlin since 2003. He is represented by the Galerie Nagel Draxler. His works can be found in public collections in London, Frankfurt/M., Oslo and Nuremberg. Since 2014 he is professor for art at the university in Bergen, Norway. Together with Ina Wudtke he runs after the butcher, an exhibition space in Berlin for contemporary art and social issues.
www.kilpper-projects.de

 

Ulrike Kuschel
"A house is being built in Biesdorf-South"

2 channel video, 6:35 min, 2020

 

The artist's sister and her husband have purchased a plot of land one kilometre south of Schloss Biesdorf in order to build a second row house there. The plot of land directly adjoins the property of the artist's parents, who also built a house there 25 years ago. In the first video, excerpts from conversations around the coffee table and interviews with the people involved are edited together with photographs of the construction project. In addition to construction details, concerns related to debt are also addressed. The description of a self-drawn floor plan by the 6-year-old daughter makes it clear how much the children are also involved in the construction process. The second video shows in fast motion the changes on the property since autumn 2019.

Ulrike Kuschel, born 1972 in Berlin, studied fine arts at the Berlin University of the Arts. Context-related research and a conceptual approach are characteristic of her artistic method, which encompasses various media. She received several scholarships, including a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (2014), a scholarship from the Villa Massimo in Rome (2010), a scholarship from the Kunstfonds Bonn Foundation (2007), a scholarship from the Senate Department for Science, Research and Culture, Berlin (2006) and won the GASAG Art Prize in 2006. Numerous exhibitions and participation in exhibitions at home and abroad.
www.ulrikekuschel.de

 

Fabian Lippert
"biesdorf city limits"

Urban design models, 2020

 

Biesdorf is part of one of the largest contiguous single-family home areas in Europe. The population density is very low. Although Biesdorf and its surroundings are green, the streets are mostly deserted. Here people are exclusively "lived in". The public space seems inanimate. It is missing: Gastronomy, local supply, commerce, a lively mix of uses. The car is the number one means of transport.
The exhibition juxtaposes various urban development models of densification. In doing so, valid norms are playfully overcome.
More density can contribute to a better mix and liveliness, from which the residents as well as the entire urban society benefit.

Fabian Lippert (*1972), lives and works in Berlin.
He graduated in architecture in 1999 from the Berlin University of the Arts and has been working as a freelance architect since 2002. In 2009 he founded the architectural office LKA-Berlin together with Sandra Kavelly. Together with Ina Geißler, he won 1st prize in the 2011 competition Kunst am Bau des Martin-Gropius-Baus with the sound installation Unterton. Further joint works will be created. His projects include architecture, art in construction and furniture design.
www.fabianlippert.de

 

REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT  (CLEANING COMPANY)
"Be One!"

Performative traffic light phase measurements
Multimedia installation, 2020

 

The project group REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT carries out a performative time measurement of traffic light phases on the heavily trafficked B1. The B1 is an important traffic artery connecting the centre of Berlin with the eastern districts. According to the BUND, the crossing of the B1 / B5 Alt-Biesdorf is one of the most pedestrian-hostile places in Berlin. The traffic axis is characterised by a high level of commuting. At the same time, the B1 cuts through the old centre of Biesdorf and isolates the districts on both sides of the road from each other. With this project, REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT raises the question of what cities and traffic will look like in the future. Will we still be able to provide motorised transport with the high degree of public space and time it requires? What would happen if Biesdorf, as a model project, decided to deduct 5 seconds of the signal time (traffic light time?) of road traffic on the B1 every year and add it to the pedestrian time? Will the ratio of pedestrian and road traffic possibly have reversed in 5 years? There will be an answer to this question in 2025, when Biesdorf celebrates its 650th birthday. Then the performance will be repeated and it will become clear whether and how mobility concepts in public transport have developed by then. In the exhibition the results of the performance will be presented as a video and photo series.

The project group REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT consists of the visual artists Martin Keil (*1968) and Henrik Mayer (*1971). Both studied at the HfBK Dresden, live and work in Berlin. The projects of the RG are participatory and relate to public space. Contemporary art has the role to reflect social life and to contribute to changes.
www.reinigungsgesellschaft.de

 

Hartmut Staake
"Nice weekend", 1981

oil on canvas
On loan from the Beeskow Art Archive

 

Daniele Tognozzi
"What leaves something to be desired", 2018 - 2020

Interactive gravitational funnel with quotations from real estate advertising texts

"North Star", 2020

Outdoor installations

 

How does art and cultural production relate to the complexity of barely visible ownership structures that shape our urban space? Why is it important today, in a time of excessive financialisation of land and housing, to also artistically reflect everyday life in this respect?
Daniele Tognozzi takes up these questions with two installations that are the result of an examination of the business and genesis of a number of real estate companies that operate around Schloss Biesdorf and Elsterwerdaer Platz respectively. The installation at the driveway to Schloss Biesdorf consists of a flag, the flag of the Swedish Johnson family, which was hoisted along the paved driveway of the palace. The family's business gave rise to the Nordstjernan real estate development company, now Bonava, which built 325 condominiums, the so-called Biesdorf city gardens, in front of the castle park in 2016.

In the interior of the palace, the artist exhibits a gravitational funnel. As soon as a coin falls into the dark hole in the middle, it activates a loudspeaker, which turns the object into a mouthpiece and presents advertising texts from the real estate industry.

Daniele Tognozzi (IT/DE), born in Bergamo, is a visual artist and author. He studied free art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna and received his MA in spatial strategies at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee in 2018. He is involved in "Kunstblock & Beyond", an association of artists and cultural workers who are active in the fight against gentrification and real estate speculation as part of the Berlin 'Mietenwahnsinn-Bündnis'. As part of "Kollektiv Quotidien" he is also editor and co-author of the book "Lefebvre for Activists", which was published by ADOCS Hamburg in 2020.

 

Ina Wudtke
"Anger" & "A palace for Berlin" (Part I+II)

Installation, 2020

 

In "Anger" Ina Wudtke takes up the question of land and quotes the form of the village ranger in her textile work. "Anger" or "Allmende" (in English "commons") refers to the village square used jointly as a laundry area, pasture or garden, the proceeds of which were shared. In their rage over capitalist urban politics, contemporary urban activists* transfer the image of the commons to the present day by recognising the soil as a precious resource alongside water and air and striving to restore it to community ownership. Ina Wudtke embroidered quotations from Karl Marx and the contemporary feminist Silvia Federici next to the eye-shaped Angerfläche, in which they mark the fencing (privatisation) of the medieval communal areas as the beginning of the capitalist age and the associated devaluation of women (-work and reproduction).

"A palace for Berlin" was originally a spoken word text written by Ina Wudtke for a demonstration against the Berlin City Palace for its topping-out ceremony in 2015. In 2020, in the context of a demonstration against the installation of the Reichsapfel mit Kreuz on the castle dome, together with the "Coalition of Cultural Workers Against The Humboldt Forum", Ina Wudtke read the text live on Schinkelplatz. This was followed by a textile work which re-used the text together with the outline of the palace.

Ina Wudtke, born 1968, is a conceptual artist and lives in Berlin. From 1992 to 2004 she published the queer-feminist artist* magazine NEID. Her research-based work questions hegemonic political and social discourses and intensifies counter-discourses on topics such as gender, work and city.  In 2018 her book "The Fine Art of Living" about her artistic work against gentrification from 2008-2018 was published (Berlin, Archive Books).
www.inawudtke.com

To top

B1 – a street through Berlin

Exhibition from August 23rd, 2020 to November 6th, 2020

Photographs by Aenne Burghardt, Ekkehart Keintzel, André Kirchner, Andreas Muhs, Peter Oehlmann, Cordia Schlegelmilch, Jörg Schmiedekind, Wolf Jobst Siedler, Peter Thieme, Volker Wartmann, Arnd Weider and Jochen Wermann. 2016 to 2020


The B1 main road connects numerous places of historical significance that shape the cityscape and make German history of the 20th century readable and tangible: November Revolution, Weimar Republic, Nazi period, war and post-war, Berlin's division and reunion after the fall of the Wall and German reunification. The contradictory history of this city, its ruptures and changes manifest themselves in the urban spaces and architecture found along the B1, which can be experienced and understood like a sequence of exhibits.

Twelve photographers show their personal perceptions and conceptions of these urban spaces, which are anchored in the present but never allow their history to be forgotten.

The Berlin Round Table on Urban Photography, which now brings together fourteen photographers on a regular basis, works on common photographic themes in addition to discussion and exchange.  
In 2016 the discussion about the B1 began. A section of this traffic route, which originally stretched from Königsberg to Aachen, passes through Berlin, from Mahlsdorf in the east of the city to the Glienicke Bridge in the southwest.

As part of the EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography 2020

Ronald Paris: Images of Being – works from six decades

Exhibition from June 14th, 2020 – August 14th, 2020
(on the first floor of Schloss Biesdorf)

Curated by Dr. Gerlinde Förster

Ronald Paris (*1933) is one of the outstanding painters and graphic artists of his generation. The retrospective exhibition shows paintings and drawings that exemplify the artist's life's work in a contrasting spatial counterpart.

The artist's oeuvre includes paintings and drawings, graphics and collages, stained glass, tapestries, stage sets and construction-related works in public space. Of equal artistic importance to large-format works in exposed locations are the paintings and graphics created on the easel in the studio, often inspired by literature, theatre and travel.

Paris needs the experience of the landscape, the human figure, and it needs the history associated with it. The desire to understand the human being by nature, to get behind the reasons and abysses of his actions, is the real driving force that drives the creation of his pictorial world to this day.

He seeks recourse to ancient figures and myths, is inspired by the dramas of Shakespeare to the poetry of Volker Braun and takes up this material for his artistic interpretations. Prometheus, Odysseus, Marsyas, Appolon, Sisyphus, Kassandra, Medea, Icarus, Iphigenia, Sappho or Hamlet, Lear and others are metaphors for him to place basic human themes in the social context of his time.

An important facet of his work are the portraits, they are the condensed expression of his realistic art. One of those portrayed is Otto Nagel. Even today, the time at the Academy of Arts, which was formative for Paris, is still alive with him as his master student. Other drawings such as those by Ernst Busch, Hanns Eisler, Heiner Müller, Harry Kupfer and Inge Keller refer to Paris' great proximity to the theater.

To this day, Paris' need is to intervene artistically. Through many of his artistic interpretations he polemically and defiantly challenges a dialogue. He is one of the few picture makers who, in search of the truth, ruthlessly illuminates living space and defends human dignity with his art. This basic trait is characteristic of his artistic attitude.

The exhibition is supported by the exhibition fund Kommunale Galerien Berlin of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

 

To top

Christine Fenzl: Land in Sun – Portraits of the Post-Reunification Youth of East Berlin

Exhibition from June 14th, 2020 – August 14, 2020
(on the ground floor of Schloss Biesdorf)

The Berlin-based photographer Christine Fenzl portrayed young people from the Berlin districts of Hellersdorf, Marzahn, Lichtenberg and Hohenschönhausen who were born during and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. For their parents, the Wall was a matter of course, but in their own world it is hardly imaginable anymore. Her series takes a look at the generation of the "Nachwendekinder" (Post-Reunification Youth).

In sensitive shots, Fenzl traces the stories and expectations of the protagonists, always maintaining the perspective of undivided interest in their motifs. She shows the people close up and undisguised, in the right light and in a familiar moment. The changing places, in which the prefabricated concrete slab architecture in particular allows us to draw conclusions about the past, also reflect youth as a state of transition.

Christine Fenzl has personally experienced the profound changes that Berlin underwent after the fall of the Wall. She moved there in 1992 and became Nan Goldin's assistant. Initially she lived in the western part of the city, then in the former eastern part of Mitte, where renewal and upheaval, but also challenges, were felt daily. Especially in the places where renewal and development have already taken place, it is becoming increasingly difficult to remember the exact course of the border. 

"I am afraid that the images of this time will disappear. Driven by the continuing change, but still noticeable former division of the city, it is important to me to give the 'Wendekinder' generation a face. I want to capture the young men and women in pictures that were born into this special time and are thus part of the history of the city," summarizes Christine Fenzl.

The exhibition is supported by the exhibition fund Kommunale Galerien Berlin of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

To top

Sehnsucht nach dem Jetzt – Longing for the Now

 

 

Welcome to the virtual exhibition tour! You can reach it under ... www.sehnsuchtnachdemjetzt.de

 

The newspaper accompanying the exhibition can be read here:
A newspaper for every day (in German only)

 

The discussion round scheduled for April 4th, 2020 from 4:00-5:30 pm has been moved to the virtual room and will be streamed live:
Livestream (Event in German)

 

Exhibition from February 24th 2020 to June 4th 2020 
Vernissage: February 23th 2020, 6-10 p.m.

When exactly is NOW? When does the past become NOW? When does the future begin after NOW?

Work from: Atsushi Fukunaga (installation), Renate Herter (photography, installation), Jörg Jantke (painting), Andreas Kempe (video, rear glass projection), Ulrike Kötz, (performance/installation), Bärbel Möllmann (camera obscura/photography), Ulrike Möschel (installation), Michael Morgner (graphic arts), Julia Murakami (photography), Annette Peuker-Krisper (graphic arts), Daniel Rode (installation), Andreas Sachsenmaier (works on paper), Thyra Schmidt (silkscreen with audio collage), Joachim Seinfeld (object boxes), Aljoscha Begrich/Axel Töpfer/Jo Preußler (collage and installation), Rebecca Ann Tess (photography), Klaus Walter (light box/painting), André Werner (video installation), Sinta Werner (photography/objects)

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Atsushi Fukunaga (installation), Renate Herter (photography, installation), Andreas Kempe (video, back glass projection), Ulrike Kötz, (performance/installation), Bärbel Möllmann (camera obscura/photography), Ulrike Möschel (installation), Julia Murakami (photography), Daniel Rode (installation), Andreas Sachsenmaier (works on paper), Thyra Schmidt (silkscreen with audio collage), Joachim Seinfeld (object boxes), Axel Töpfer/Jo Preußler (collage and installation), Rebecca Ann Tess (photography), Klaus Walter (light box/painting), André Werner (video installation), Sinta Werner (photography/objects) anda.

Curated by Andreas Sachsenmaier, Joachim Seinfeld, Bärbel Möllmann, Karin Scheel

"Longing for the NOW" in Schloss Biesdorf is the first part of a three-part exhibition in Berlin, Dresden and Düsseldorf. The exhibition series revolves around the "longing for the NOW", that elusive moment of the present. In order for the NOW to become (graspable), what lies before and what lies after must be considered. These three phases - past, present, future - are therefore the focal points of the exhibition, whereby each time is assigned a cultural and socio-political dimension.

The fleeting and fragile moment of NOW can best be captured in the moment of the creative process. Consequently, the Berlin prelude in Schloss Biesdorf deals with both the present and the moment of artistic creation. Seventeen artists are taking up this challenge in Schloss Biesdorf.

In his film loop Baumfall/Scioto River, for example, Andreas Kempe shows exactly the short but so strongly lingering moment when a tree falls onto a cycle path. The twittering of birds, the murmuring of the wind and the rustling of leaves are interrupted for only a few seconds by a loud crash and then continue as if nothing had happened. In her photo series "Alpha++ Models", Rebecca Ann Tess juxtaposes the urban centers of the world and shows the sterile aesthetics of neoliberally shaped cities in which human bodies appear only as fragments and even nature itself is only fitted into geometric structures as a green wall or an accurately trimmed hedge. The individual that once existed in these places, the regional characteristic of the past disappears and the new, the seemingly smooth comes. In her photo collages, installations and sculptures Sinta Werner plays with reality and its image and reflects the NOW through illusory spaces and mirrors.

In Ulrike Möschel's object, the momentary nature of the present is brought to bear at the moment of reflection through a reflective surface. For this she uses silver leaf, an old and traditional material for the production of mirrors. In Düsseldorf, Möschel refers to the past with additional green oxidised surfaces.

As is usual for an exhibition in Schloss Biesdorf, works from the holdings of the Beeskow Art Archive are also represented in "Longing for the Now". The works by Annette Peuker-Krisper, Jörg Jantke and Michael Morgner broaden the view of the theme to include positions from the perspective of artists who worked in the GDR.

The NOW,
as well as the longing for the same, we perceive as a sequence of moments that we divide into past, present and future. But what is present, the moment, the moment, the NOW? Is it even comprehensible? Or has it not already elapsed when we become aware of it? This question and how we deal with it seems to be immensely important for us humans. The longing for the NOW, as well as its failure, has been and is treated by the great religions as well as by philosophy. People have devised a number of strategies to live the moment, and only the moment, in self-forgetfulness. The (positive) moment should be enjoyed, the fading out of past and future should lead to the greatest happiness. But will we even get there? To the NOW?

Artistic creation, just like the NOW, is always risky. "Sehnsucht nach dem Jetzt" therefore presents both finished works and works created directly on site, such as installations or performances, in all locations in order to do justice to the uncertainty of the moment.

Publication
A newspaper will be published to accompany the exhibition, expanding the spectrum of the exhibition's artistic-visual works to include the written word and creative "notes".

Structured in the style of a classical daily newspaper in the categories politics, feuilleton, miscellaneous, advertisements etc., this "A newspaper for all days" gathers together artistic works as well as scientific contributions, poems, literary texts etc.

The programme of events and offers for art education can be found at www.schlossbiesdorf.de

Outlook
The Düsseldorf exhibition (2021) reflects not only the past, but also philosophical contemplation, while the exhibition in Dresden (GEH8 Kunstraum June 12nd - June 28th 2020) links the political will to shape the future with the desire to create.

An event of the Department of Culture Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
You can find more information about culture in Marzahn-Hellersdorf on the Internet at www.kultur-marzahn-hellersdorf.de.

To top

Of People And Walls – 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall

all photos from the exhibition rooms © Birgitta Schmidt

Exhibition from October 28, 2019 to February 14, 2020
Vernissage on October 27, 2019, 06:00-10:00 p.m.

30 years ago, in November 1989, after 28 years of existence, the Berlin Wall, symbol of German division, was accidentally opened by strong public pressure from many people in the eastern part of the country.The trigger was a misleadingly formulated note read at a press conference by Günter Schabowski, O-tone: "To the best of my knowledge ... that is immediately, at once".On the occasion of this globally symbolic event, Schloss Biesdorf will open the exhibition Von Menschen und Mauern/Of People And Walls on October 27,2019.In addition to various artistic works on the Berlin Wall, its opening and its slow disappearance, the exhibition shows positions on political walls in a global context. Today, walls still demarcate and exclude people all over the world, they lock them in, constrict and separate people from each other. The perspectives of the participating artists reveal dividing lines and boundaries between the included and the excluded, illuminating the relationship between man and political power. Works of fine art from various genres are shown: painting, graphics, sculpture, photography, performance, multimedia and video.

Participating artists:
Marina Abramovic/Ulay, Kurt Buchwald, Christo (reproduction with the kind support of Matthias Koddenberg), Sighard Gille, Sabina Grzimek, Franz John, Martin Kippenberger (reproduction with the kind support of Galerie Gisela Capitain), Mark Lammert, Wolf Leo, Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler, Rudi Meisel, Manfred Paul, Stefan Roloff, Jürgen Schneider, Erasmus Schröter, Victor Sloan, Peter Thieme, Wolf Vostell and Dieter Wendland and others

Curated by Gabriele Muschter and Uwe Warnke in collaboration with Karin Scheel
Lenders: the artists, DPA

A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.

Dialogical guided tours through the exhibition with Fenia Franz (Labor M)
on Saturdays, 02.11. / 09.11. / 16.11. / 23.11. / 30.11. / 07.12. / 14.12.2019 // 11.01. / 18.01. / 25.01. / 01.02.2020 each 02:00-03:00 p.m.
Further information on the accompanying programme: Labor M – Art Communication

An event of the department of culture Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
More information about culture in Marzahn-Hellersdorf can be found on the Internet at

www.kultur-marzahn-hellersdorf.de.

 

The exhibition:

Marina Abramovic / Ulay, Performance artist, Nwe York, Amsterdam/Ljubljana
"China Ring", 1986

In preparation for their long-term project "The Lovers - The Great Wall Walk" they travelled through China to get to know the country and its people. The video "China-Ring" was created. In 1988 both finished their collaboration with the project "The Lovers - The Great Wall Walk". In ninety days, they approached each other from both ends of the Great Wall to finally separate on the last day, the Day of Encounter.

Kurt Buchwald, Photographer, Action Artist, Berlin
from the series: "Ein Tag in Ostberlin", 1986/2019, photo print on Alu-Dibond
"Blendenwagen", 2005, chipboard and wood, painted

Kurt Buchwald has always worked consistently and conceptually. From the very beginning he has questioned the medium of photography itself. In his works he repeatedly shows us what the process of photography actually is. It is obvious that the view through the viewfinder is extraordinarily limited.

Christo (1935-2009), New York
Temporary wall project with metal drums (Rue Visconti, Paris, 6th arrondissement), 1961/62, collage and typewritten text

One year later, in 1962, Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude erected a wall of oil barrels in the Rue Visconti on the left bank of the Seine in Paris under the impression of the construction of the Wall in 1961. The title "The Iron Curtain", his concern: to show the effects of the broken off connection of paths between people.
(Reproduction with the kind support of Matthias Koddenberg)

Sighard Gille, painter/graphic artist, Leipzig
"The Beginning of Something", object, 1989

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Sighard Gille painted a picture under the first impression of this event, but was then so insecure and overwhelmed by the rapid changes that he scratched the paint off the canvas again and filled it into a jelly sausage glass.
It is also to be understood as a failed attempt, which the artist in this way manages to transform into something new in a profound and humorous way.
"Star of Unity", oil on canvas, 1991
"9.10.89", oil on canvas, 1989

Sabina Grzimek, sculptor, Berlin and Brandenburg
"Seven gestures of the upright gait", 1993, bronze, (middle version)

Enumerator, Looking, Questioner, Rising from the water, Caller, Thinker, Reminder
The figures are all rather rejecting, concentrated on their interior, brusque to the outside - they assert themselves.
The upright gait as a symbol of pride, dignity, strength of character. The figures have backbone and remain consistent, even in difficult situations: as a moral statement of conscience. In addition to the figures, etchings by the artist are shown.

Franz John, multimedia artist, Berlin
"interzone", 1999, CD-ROM, iMac computer + mouse

Immediately after the opening of the Berlin Wall, including the death strip, Franz John covered the entire length of the Wall. He wanted to capture their condition - while the tourists tried to break out pieces of the Wall in the inner-city area. Under the suspicious eyes of border guards on their meaningless activities, he laid the foundations for a document that he later published in the CD ROM shown here.

Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997), Berlin, Paris, Vienna and elsewhere
O. T., from the series "dear painter, paint me", 1981, reproduction on Alu-Dibond

In 1981 he created the painting "Lieber Maler mal mir", which he did not paint himself, but "commissioned" as an ironic depiction of the divided city of Berlin.
(Reproduction with the kind support of Galerie Gisela Capitain)

Mark Lammert, painter/graphic designer, Berlin
Picture series "ALLIIERT", 1994-1996, oil on the backs of maps

The large-format series of pictures entitled Alliiert recalls the state of Germany after the end of the Second World War, the disunity of the people, guilt and atonement. The human figure, strongly reduced, available as material. Only the picture carrier of this painting, the reverse side of old maps mounted on linen, showing a Europe if you saw it, that it doesn't exist any more, opens another dimension.

Wolf Leo, designer, Berlin
"Painting reasons: The East Side of the Berlin Wall", painting action at Potsdamer Platz, 19.-21.11.1989, 1989/2019, collages, reproductions

Wolf Leo co-initiated the painting action at Potsdamer Platz on 21.11.1989.
Artists met to paint the wall from the east side. The next day, border guards painted everything over - it was only months later that the "Eastside Gallery" was created. The artists were too early with their action.

Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler, Photographers, Berlin
Series "Where the world ended", 2010-2012

The series "Wo die Welt zu Ende war" (Where the world ended) is a joint work 2010-2012. With the certain feeling that history is never over, they travelled to the former "green" border. At the previously manifest dividing line between the political blocs, they experienced the remains of a restricted area in which death at home and the world actually came to an end.

Rudi Meisel, Photographer, Berlin
From the series "Landsleute", 1977-1987

As a West German photographer he accompanied the journalist Marlies Menge on her travels in and through the GDR. In the process, he developed a look at the found everyday life, which is out for what connects it, recognizes it and captures it. This is not denunciatory, know-it-all and arrogant. It is downright irritating, surprising. It resonates with a lot of humour.

Manfred Paul, Photographer, Berlin
20.04.1990 - 15.00 o'clock - Köpenicker Street / Panorama, 1990, Digital-Print on Alu-Dibond
20.03.1990 - 07:00 - Schwedter Street, 1990, Baryt-Print
24.02.1990 - 16:30 - An der Buchholzer Straße, 1990, Baryt-Print
18.06.1990 - 18:00 - Bernauer Strasse, 1990,Baryt-Print'
21.03. 1990 - 9:30 - At the Falkplatz, 1990, Baryt-Print
20.02.1990 - 8:30 - An der Buchholzer Straße, 1990, Baryt-Print
19.04.1990 - 10:00 - Cemetery St. Hedwig-Gemeinde / French Cathedral Community, 1990, Baryt-Print
02.01.1990 - 14:00 - Schwedter Strasse, 1990, digital print

Manfred Paul's impressive photographs are dedicated to a casual everyday life. Only titled with date, time and place do they recall what is often overlooked as a banal phenomenon and are thus also a chronicle of vanished places.

Stefan Roloff, German-American painter, video artist and filmmaker, Berlin/New York
Vopos in the East and Fopos in the West I - III, photo of the action at the border crossing Bernauer Straße, Berlin, 1981, light boxes

In 1980, the artist went directly to the wall with a few friends to carry out an artistic action. Dressed in whitewashed military coats and caps, they build an observation tower on which puppets occupy it, march, assume positions, observe and are observed. In imperfect poses, they copy a set of rules that they could observe every day beyond the Wall. Their not harmless performance was a theatre of the absurd.

Jürgen Schneider, author and artist, Düsseldorf
Walls in West Belfast, 1990
Victor Sloan, photographer, Northern Ireland
Walls in Northern Ireland, 2019

Jürgen Schneider and Victor Slohan independently photographed the walls in Northern Ireland, yet the brutality of this division is unanimously reflected in the images.

Erasmus Schröter, Photographer, Leipzig
From the series "Komparsen", 2016/2017

With a slightly mocking look, the pictures suggest (although they were not created specifically in connection with the Berlin Wall) the desolation of the Berlin Wall as well. An everyday life that clouds over everything; accepting the circumstances and hoping.

Peter Thieme, Photographer, Berlin
"Berlin Escape", 1961-1988, Fine Art Prints

In the 2010s, Peter Thieme photographed places along the Berlin Wall where border breakthroughs were recorded between 1961 and 1989 - Berlin places / Berlin escapes - and, by the way, tells the story of fateful events. The authentic places have long since been reshaped, streets and built-up areas have taken their place.

Wolf Vostell (1932- 1998), painter, sculptor and happening artist, Berlin
9. November 89, 1989 (reproduction on Alu-Dibond), from the cycle "Fall of the Berlin Wall".

An artist full of life energy, he reacted with great joy to the news that the wall no longer existed. He spontaneously painted the large-format painting "9 November 89", 1989 from the cycle "The Fall of the Berlin Wall". Vostell saw himself as a political artist. He has created over 50 works on the theme of the Wall, including large-format paintings, drawings, and silkscreen prints, some of which are shown in the exhibition.

Dieter Wendland, Photographer, Berlin
Wendland's visual language is calm and objective, his gaze very accurate without dissecting. Pain over the desolation of the city divided by a wall becomes clear in the pictures.

 

We show the following works with the kind support of dpa/Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH:

Gary Moon
"U.S. Mexico Border Fence and Landscape, no year, digital print.

Charlie Riedel
"US Mexico Border Wall Arizona," 2019, digital print.

Sahan Nuhoglu
"Nicosia: The last divided capital of Europe", 2016, Digital-Print

Achim Scheidemann
"Cyprus - Greek Border in Nicosia", 2006, digital print

Issam Rimawi
Passages to Jerusalem for the first Friday prayer of Ramadan, 2019, digital print

Jürgen  Schwenkenbecher
"East Jerusalem: Living with the Wall", 2018, Digital-Print

Agentur Yonhap
"Nachtansicht der entmilitarisierten Zone", 2018, Digitaldruck

Ahn Young-Joon
"Südkorea Koreas Diplomatie", 2018, Digitaldruck

Thomas Haupt
"China, Mutianyu, Große Mauer", o. J., Digitaldruck

Sun Jun Badaling
"Große Mauer voller Herbstfarben", o. J., Digital-Print

 

To top

KLASSE DAMEN! / CLASS LADIES!

Video/Web Preview "If you were ..." (Ellen Kobe. Performance at the vernissage "KLASSE DAMEN!". 2019), Photo: Tom Wagner

100 Years Opening of the Berlin Art Academy for Women
Exhibition from June 17, 2019 to October 13, 2019
Vernissage: June 16, 2019, 06:00-10:00 p.m.

with Birgit Bellmann (graphic print), Alke Brinkmann (painting), Ines Doleschal (collage), Else (Twin) Gabriel (photography, video, painting), Ellen Kobe (performance, installation), Coco Kühn (installation), Petra Lottje (video, drawing), Seraphina Lanz (wall piece, object), Cornelia Renz (drawing), Karin Rosenberg (object), Fiene Scharp (Cut-out), Elisabeth Sonneck (installation), Ute Weiss Leder (installation), Gaby Taplick (installation)

as well as Charlotte Berend-Corinth (painting, printmaking), Hannah Höch (collages), Marg Moll (sculpture), Lotte Laserstein (drawing), Doramaria Purschian (drawing, painting), Emy Roeder (sculpture), Erna Schmidt-Caroll (drawings, painting), Maria Slavona (painting), Gertrud Spitta (painting), Milly Steger (sculpture), Elisabeth Voigt (printmaking) and Julie Wolfthorn (painting).

As of March 1919 women were allowed to study at the Royal Academy of Art in Berlin. Until then they had been dependent on private teachers, overpriced "ladies' classes" or arts and crafts schools. Today only a few of the female artists who asserted themselves in the patriarchal art world in the 19th century until the First World War are known and were sometimes able to fight for a recognized position that would secure their livelihood. Their works still lie largely unexplored in archives and depots. A few, such as Jeanne Mammen, Lotte Laserstein and Renée Sintenis, have recently received late and timid appreciation.

In an exhibition at Schloss Biesdorf we want to juxtapose the partly still unknown works of first-generation sculptors and painters such as Julie Wolfthorn, Marg Moll, Milly Steger and Erna Schmidt-Caroll with positions of contemporary Berlin artists. In portraits and landscape paintings, still lifes and children's portraits, the artists of Classical Modernism show not only their talent, but also their bias in a world of motifs dictated to them by their male colleagues. When Hannah Höch and others consciously break with the iconographic tradition and touch on social taboos in terms of content, this demonstrates her great courage and self-confidence. Breaking taboos is also a concern of contemporary female artists. They develop site- and exhibition-related works that critically reflect today's art world – its exhibition practice and funding structures, its value system and gender issues. Through room installations, film and video, cut outs, collages, painting and performance, the Berlin artists open up a visual dialogue with the artists of the time and create a space for thought for questions that are virulent both then and now.

In conjunction with a mediation concept and an accompanying programme of lectures, films, readings and a discussion forum in the lecture hall of Biesdorf Palace, we see the exhibition KLASSE DAMEN! as a contribution to a socio-political discourse and as an impetus for an effective public reflection. As artists and curators, as women for whom the balancing act between family and artistic work is a daily challenge, we have a great interest in making the largely unknown history of the admission of women to the art academies public. With it we thematize and discuss all the implications that arose for women then and still arise today – from family fractures, childlessness and poverty to defamation, prejudice and ostracism to "modern" problems such as structural discrimination in the art world with its still rampant gender pay and gender show gap.

Curation: Ellen Kobe and Ines Doleschal in collaboration with Karin Scheel
Accompanying programme: lectures, panel discussion, musical-literary matinee, film programme etc.
Art education: Labor M in collaboration with Birgit Bellmann
Lenders: Bröhan-Museum, Georg Kolbe Museum, Kunstarchiv Beeskow, Reinickendorf zu Berlin District Office, Galerie Die Möwe Berlin, Berlinische Galerie, Akademie der Künste, Das Verborgene Museum, as well as private collectors.

Dialogical guided tours through the exhibition with Fenia Franz (Labor M)
on Saturdays, 22. Jun. / 29. Jun. / 06. Jul. / 13. Jul. / 10. Aug. / 17. Aug. / 24. Aug. / 07. Sept. / 14. Sept. / 21. Sept. / 28. Sept. 2019 each 02:00-03:00 p.m.

Accompanying Programme: Labor M – Art Communication

To top

COLLECT, SELECT, SAY GOOD-BYE

collect, select, release 

Works of Kathrin Sohn, Burchard Vossmann, Ila Wingen, Sophie Tiller, Almud Moog, Doris Hinzen-Röhrig and Susanne Piotter

Exhibition from April 8th, 2019 – June 7th, 2019
Vernissage on Arpil 7th, 2019, 06:00 p.m.

Inherited, bought, created or even passionately collected, an average household allegedly owns 10,000 objects during its lifetime. An amazing number, but one that makes clear: we collect things, we select them – and let them go, sooner or later. A classic collection of bizarre objects, an inherited artist's estate, floods of images in social media, the constant growth of one's own artistic work, but also so-called dust collectors and global garbage collections are the approaches to the content of the respective artistic works in the exhibition on the upper floor of Schloss Biesdorf. To preserve, transform, give away or dispose of things requires individual decisions. What makes things valuable or worthless for people? The artists of the exhibition explore these questions in installations, objects, photographs and drawings. A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.

 

To top

MaHe inside

Photographs by Gerhard Westrich

Exhibition from April 8th, 2019 – June 7th, 2019
Vernissage on April 7th, 2019, 06:00 p.m.

Photographer Gerhard Westrich has portrayed numerous people in the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf in recent months. He was not looking for a representative cross-section of society, but for personal stories and moods.

The exhibition "MaHe inside" on the ground floor of Schloss Biesdorf shows a selection of the photographs taken, supplemented by brief statements by the people portrayed. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication, financed by the Stiftung Kulturwerk der VG Bild-Kunst.

 

To top

Hybrid Sculptors – the (un)visible garden

Virtual Reality, Music and Performance
with Keez Duyves (NL) and Thomas Bratzke (D)

Room installation on June 1st and 2nd, 2019, 12:00-20:00 o'clock, Heino-Schmieden-Saal

The artists Keez Duyves (NL) and Thomas Bratzke of the Hybrid Sculptors group are creating a virtual flower garden in Schloss Biesdorf using Augmented Reality (AR) technology. Real plants and objects from the gardener's world are given an additional spatial level that becomes visible through projections. This process is accompanied by music. Visitors of all ages are invited to accompany the development of this virtual installation.

The Potator is an invention of the artist Keez Duyves of the collective PIPS:lab (NL). This versatile tool, based on a motion capturing system and augmented reality (AR), is used in the context of the project HALFHALF, which was developed in collaboration with the artist Thomas Bratzke aka ZASD, to extend canvases into space by means of virtual, three-dimensional color: Real painted images virtually continue from the surface into the space. The Potator combines painting, sculpture and movement and invites its users to create reality ...

 

To top

Graphic to songs of the French Revolution

A portfolio from the holdings of the Beeskow Art Archive

Exhibition from march 25th - july 3rd 2019

In 1988, the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR commissioned a graphic portfolio to be published on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. Why, one might ask, is the historical event chosen that is so ambivalent and carries with it a complex history of interpretation? The editors of the graphic folder had one specific aspect in mind: In the enclosed text, art historian Peter Pachnicke emphasizes the " sensuous power of persuasion " of the people who wrestled for recognition on the streets of Paris. However, this pathos conjured up there cannot be seen in the prints of the 16 artists, each of whom contributed one sheet.

In 1989, "Graphic to songs of the French Revolution" was published with the supplement of a record with a total of 21 songs sung by Dieter Süverkrüp, whose texts date from the time of the French Revolution. And even if the graphics with their titles refer to those battle and love songs, these rarely reflect the atmosphere of the pictures. Here, no people is revolting. In gloomy visions the artists show in lithographs, etchings, aquatints and a silkscreen, doubting figures, masses that are once again oppressed by a king and the grimaces of dubious "heirs" who move forward threateningly. Black dominates many of the compositions, be they delicate, fragile arrangements or figures formed with thick strokes. Even the coloured leaves in this compendium are gripped by this drastic quality. The tension-filled contrast between the interpretation of the clients and the interpretations and implementations of the artists also opens a glimpse of the now historical moment of 1989.

With works by Ulrich Hachulla, Karl-Georg Hirsch, Joachim Jansong, Joachim John, Rolf Kuhrt, Werner Liebmann, Gerd Mackensen, Reinhard Minkewitz, Rolf Münzner, Ronald Paris, Volker Pfüller, Otto Sander, Stefan Thomas Wagner, Frank Wahle, Trak Wendisch and Winfried Wolk.

Entrance is free.

Opening: march 24th 2019 // 2 PM

 

To top

Fernwärme / District Heating

Marzahn Hellersdorf – Photographic Positions

Exhibition from Febuary 17th – March 29th 2019
Finissage on March 29, 2019 from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Marzahn-Hellersdorf the idea of a cooperation between the district office Marzahn-Hellersdorf and the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie was born.
In February 2019, the cultural prelude to this anniversary will take place in the form of a large photo exhibition in Biesdorf Castle, which was reconstructed in 2016 as a municipal exhibition venue.
The students of the OKS classes have been taking photographs in the district since March. Their work will be supervised by Maria Sewcz and Tobias Kruse, the teachers of the specialist classes.

In cooperation with the director of Schloss Biesdorf, Karin Scheel, Ludwig Rauch curates and supervises the exhibition as project manager.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue.

Admission is free

Vernissage: February 16th 2019 // 6:00-11:30 p.m.

We cordially invite you to the opening of the exhibition. Also Book Launch of "NY Edited. Belonging".

 

To top

life spot

Participatory project of people with cognitive impairment
Artistic Direction: Carola Rümper

Exhibition from November 18th, 2018 until February 8th, 2019

The project focuses on the voluntary work of people with cognitive impairments. The commitment of these people is hardly noticed in society. As a rule, they are only perceived as recipients of help. The project breaks with this one-sided perception.

In an accompanied artistic process under the direction of the artist Carola Rümper, the participants developed photographs that represent their own honorary office. The photographic results are summarized in the memo game life spot.
In the exhibition, all the photographs taken can be seen lying on the floor as a giant memo. The expansive installation is at the same time a walk-in playing surface, each individual playing card measuring 45x45cm. As in the smaller model, the visitors are invited to find the same pairs of images.

The memory game is a socially known and popular medium to bring people together.  A play form, which introduces visually into a topic. In life spot, idiosyncratic motifs are chosen for a special theme. Inclusion or participation of all humans in the society moves as topic into the foreground. Through the memo game form, the theme is brought "playfully" into society. 

Admission is free

To top

"... und des Menschen Größe /... and the greatness of man"

Graphics and photographs of poems by Johannes R. Becher.
Presentation of the Beeskow Art Archive - Archived Art from the GDR

Falko Behrendt, Christian Brachwitz, Helmut Brade, Manfred Butzmann, Michael Diller, Andreas Dress, Hubertus Giebe, Konstanze Göbel, Dieter Goltzsche, Ulrich Hachulla, Joachim John, Barbara Köppe, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Manfred Paul, Christine Perthen, Wolfgang Petrovsky, Uwe Pfeifer, Helfried Strauß, Ursula Strozynski, Dieter Tucholke, Werner Wittig

Exhibition from November 18th, 2018 until February 25th, 2019

Opening on Sunday, November 18th, 2018, 11:00 a.m.

Graphic folders are exhibitions on a small scale. The potential to capture a theme, an idea deeply and multi-facettedly in pictures floats between the folder lid and the folder floor. In the course of their 40 years, mass organizations and political institutions in the GDR have commissioned numerous graphic folders. The Beeskow Art Archive holds a significant collection of such portfolios, with examples from all four decades. This illustrates the development of the thematic production of GDR cultural policy, but also how differently artists dealt with these settings, where the limits of what can be said ran, where leeway was granted. Especially towards the end of the 1980s, the compilations appear increasingly ambiguous: gloom and ambivalence dominate many motifs that allow more than one interpretation.

Also the portfolio " ... und des Menschen Größe / ... and the greatness of man. Graphics and photographs of poems by Johannes R. Becher" (1988) can be seen in this context. "Schritt der Jahrhundertmitte / step of the middle of the century" (1958), the last volume of poetry that Becher created before his death, served 20 artists as the starting point for their work. It is the pondering of a poet like a socialist loyal to the line, disillusioned and doubtful at the end, about potentials and abysses of human existence in the context of society and history. The images that the artists derive from this text show people marked by dissension, sometimes in oppressive loneliness, sometimes in the whirlpool of social processes of which they themselves are the creators. While there are a few colored sheets among the 16 prints, the 20 photographs appear in grainy black and white. These photographs bear the melancholy for which East German author photography would become famous only a few years later.

The Beeskow Art Archive regularly shows excerpts from its holdings at Schloss Biesdorf. From Berlin, the presentations refer to the more than 20,000 works of art from the time of the GDR that have been preserved and made accessible in Beeskow in Brandenburg since the early 1990s.

 

To top

Soft City – City & Art // Japan & Berlin

© all photos: Birgitta Schmidt

Exhibition from Sep 7th 2018 to Feb 8th 2019

The exhibition "Soft City" at Schloss Biesdorf shows works by artists from Japan and Germany who deal with urban developments in Japan and Europe.

In the exhibition "Soft City" they carry these experiences into the Berlin district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf in order to enter into a dialogue with the place and, of course, with the people against the background of the different cultural contexts. In recent weeks, some of the artists have been on the road in the district, and site-specific works developed in the process have been incorporated into the exhibition.

The exhibition's artistic works repeatedly focus on the human scale, which is much more present in Japanese urban space with its small-scale wooden architecture than in the West. The various workshops, performances, city explorations and other accompanying events also deal with possible strategies and visions for urban communities that are not determined by master plans, but by human perception and lively dialogue in urban space.

+++

Works by:

Florian Baron/Jenny Fadranski
David Bauer, Linda Havenstein
Masaru Iwai
Titus Spree
Yukihiro Taguchi/Chiara Ciccarello
Katsuhito Nakazato/Sugano Matsusaki
Yuji Ueno

Concept and curation:

Titus Spree, Linda Havenstein, Karin Scheel

+++

The exhibition:

Florian Baron/Jenny Fadranski
"Marzahn 2017"

At the 8th Congress of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in 1971 it was decided to solve the housing problem as a social problem by 1990. The utopian settlement in Berlin-Marzahn was to be part of this solution.
In 1972, two researchers from the GDR Ministry of Cybernetics and Urban Planning were sent 45 years into the future to document how the settlement had developed and whether the social problem had been solved. This is a SciFi Mockumentary that takes up the urban utopias of the GDR using the East Berlin district of Marzahn as an example. Baron and Fadranski created a documentary snapshot of Marzahn's life in 2017 using the then innovative Super 8 film technique, which stages a journey through time as if scientists from the GDR's cybernetic research department in the 1970s were looking at the former utopian Marzahn of our present day.
The film is accompanied by music by sound artist Jana Irmert from her album FLOOD, released 2018 on Fabrique Records, digitally on Bandcamp.

Linda Havenstein
"Street joke"

For the installation, window facades were filmed in the Marzahn-Hellersdorf district, in which the light of the television sets is reflected inside the rooms.
The flickering television light is amplified on further monitors, suggesting the image of a Morse code, a kind of communication between the houses and their inhabitants.
The installation suggests a relationship and an internal communication in the community that exists despite the clearly separated houses and spaces between the residents and creates a public sphere. "Straßenwitz" ultimately proves to be a humorous caricature of the stereotypical and categorizing view of Marzahn-Hellersdorf.

Linda Havenstein
"Me ne frego"

Standard household door curtains are combined to form a room-filling installation. Coloured patterns are worked into the monochrome curtains, which at first glance appear to be purely decorative elements. On closer inspection, however, these patterns turn out to be binary codes that reveal political slogans when decoded.
The door curtains, which also serve as room dividers, stand for the space between "door and hinge", the ambivalent space that lies between the private and the public. The slogans incorporated in the work go back to real slogans that had a concrete political demand, but have undergone a change through processing in digital space. The political slogans are just as ambivalent in their meaning as the public political discussion has shifted into an ambivalent space between the street and digital space.

Masaru Iwai
"Martian Tooth Stratigraphy"

Masaru Iwai has approached the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf in many artistic research tours. His experiences, his encounters with people and the traces of their actions are layered in moving images over the original structure of an existing urban planning.

Katsuhito Nakazato/Sugano Matsusaki
"Corners"

When people leave their homes, they naturally pass through corners of houses. The contrast between the corners and the urban landscape that appears behind them disappears from individual consciousness as part of everyday life and yet is an archetypal part of their own living environment.
The corners, which the inhabitants of the district Marzahns - Hellersdorf see, were depicted in pairs on screens. The original landscape, hidden from the everyday landscape, was uncovered.

Katsuhito Nakazato/Sugano Matsusaki
"Gento" (street cinema)

During the exploration tours in the district, the artists collected trash and found objects. Their image was projected onto walls with the Gentoki, an analog Japanese projector. The resulting images were photographed and form a series of human traces in public space in the exhibition.

Titus Spree
"MMO" (Moving micro office)

Titus Spree's multi-layered work dealt with various aspects of public space in the Marzahn-Hellersdorf district.
DasMoving micro office (MMO) is a small space on wheels. With a footprint of 1 x 2 meters and a height of 2.4 meters, it can be walked through the city without much effort. In the course of the Soft City exhibition, MMO will move through the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf as a temporary space for dialogue and communication.  The MMO will also be used by the artist as a working space, it is of course also an experiment and - if you like - a food for thought on wheels. Creative freedom and the possible introduction of the individual into society in the often highly regulated urban space is an important aspect of this project.
 

Titus Spree
"Dormitory City"

The work "Schlafstadt" is a play with the term "Schlafstadt", which is often used in connection with "peripheral suburbs" such as the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
A bamboo ball rolled through the district in the run-up to the exhibition and was fixed at various locations at short notice. Also pulled up, it could serve as a sleeping dwelling and open up a new level in the urban space. During the exhibition, the bamboo ball will be suspended in the airspace of the octagon in Biesdorf Castle.

Titus Spree
"Tokyo at Portikus"

A fabric replica of a small house from Tokyo in the portico of Biesdorf Castle shows the way to the exhibition in the castle and visualises the different architectural dimensions in different cultures.

Yukihiro Taguchi/Chiara Ciccarello

For the exhibition Yukihiro Taguchi and Chiara Ciccarello create an animation project realized directly on the streets of Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
This cooperative project combines the real urban landscape of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, which Taguchi captured in stop-motion clips, with Ciccarello's imaginary figures, whose stories were inspired by their surroundings. Both hiked the district, filmed and drew directly on site and noted down the cartoon characters in the real landscape with the help of a transparent drawing surface. The animation is shown together with an installation of painted, transparent panels and drawings on the windows of the exhibition space.

Yuji Ueno

The Japanese artist Ueno, who is also a practicing Ikebana master, works with the natural environment in the district and especially in Biesdorf Castle Park. He uses finds and materials from nature for his highly-present performances. His work provides visitors with a surprisingly intense view of the world around us.

Admission is free

To top

"mancherorts" (in some places) und "examining the edge - peripheries in the mind and the city"

"mancherorts" - works by Kirsten Johannsen,
Bärbel Schlüter and Birgit Szepanski

On the upper floor of the palace, Kirsten Johannsen, Bärbel Schlüter and Birgit Szepanski show installations, objects and photographs of urban explorations. In some places, the exhibition draws attention to the perception of the city. In their respective working methods, the artists take up urban observations for site-related works: their atmospheres, their aesthetic spaces of experience, and their history(s).          

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Examining the edge -
peripheries in the mind and the city"

Cooperation with the Experimental Film and Media Art class of the UdK Berlin under the direction of Prof. Nina Fischer and Dr. Marjan Sharifi
 

The exhibition "Examining the edge - peripheries in the mind and the city" on the ground floor of the palace is dedicated to the eponymous seminar of the Experimental Film and Media Art department of the UdK Berlin under the direction of Prof. Nina Fischer and Dr. Marjan Sharifi. The students of the UdK Berlin develop artistic positions on life in the spatial and mental periphery.
In cooperation with Schloss Biesdorf, artistic direction: Karin Scheel
In the context of Make City, Berlin Remixing / city newly mixed.

The exhibitions are accompanied by a supporting programme, which can be found at
www.labor-m.berlin

 

 

 

 

 

 

To top

DIETER TUCHOLKE Negativbilder

A graphic folder work from Kunstarchiv Beeskow


Exhibition, May 5th 2018 to end of October 2018

The new exhibition presented by Kunstarchiv Beeskow is dedicated to the graphic artist Dieter Tucholke (1934-2001) who intensively and critically addressed German history from an East German perspective. The focus is on his graphic sequence "Negativbilder" [negative images] about Prussian history that he created in 1980-81 and which is one of his most famous works.


The artist is focused on the weaknesses and vices of the Prussian kings, since he deeply distrusted their so-called virtues. With an imagery that still fascinates today, Tucholke assembled the portraits from symbols and objects, which are accompanied by short mocking texts.

Free admission.

To top

"Ankommen" (Arriving) - 21 artistic positions

Exhibition from May 11th to Jun 15th 2018

All 21 artists of this exhibition have or had their place of work in Marzahn-Hellersdorf for a while. Some works thematize the traces of this place, of the studio - others question the artistic work itself. Is arriving a goal, a longing, or a state that must always be redefined? Arriving in this exhibition also means arriving at Schloss Biesdorf, a new Berlin gallery. Works by: Charlotte Duale, Stephan von Arx, Robert Kipping, Thomas Bratzke, Maurice de Martin, Lukas Oertel, Thomas Wagner, Christian Schellenberger, Sascha Hundorff (with Anna Herms and Steve Paul Steven Paul), Wadim Hermann, Enikö Marton, Carola Rümper, Thomas Prochnow, An Seebach, Christiane Stegat, Daniel Wolter, Tobias Löffler, Irene Pätzug, Anne Michaux, Caroline Wagner, Ramon Muggli (curated by Karin Scheel)

Admission is free.

 

 

 

To top