14 April – 9 June 2012

Devised as a mini-retrospective, Brian O’Doherty’s exhibition, From Electrocardiogram to Rope Drawing, at Galerie Thomas Fischer showcases the artist’s drawing from 1964 to 2012, in addition to sundry other works. O`Doherty, renowned for his essay series Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (1976) is a seminal figure in the discourse surrounding the presentation forms of contemporary art. The show focuses on the importance of the line in O’Doherty’s oeuvre – strongly evident in both his drawings and paintings, and marrying them with his theoretical work. This representative selection of O’Doherty’s multi-faceted work includes the Portrait of Marcel Duchamp series, completed in the 1960s and based on a cardiogram that the artist, also a physician, made of Duchamp shortly before his death. [Saskia Neuman]

From EYEOUT’s column in MITTESCHÖN – June 2012

28 April – 30 June 2012 

Rirkrit Tiravanija appoints Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth as his main point of reference in the exhibition: Untitled, 2012 (Freedom can not be simulated) at neugerriemschneider. A quote, a set of specific instructions from Roth to Hanns Sohm in 1964, is evenly sprayed in German in the main gallery space, and appears in English in the following room. It refers to Roth’s Literaturwürste (Literature Sausages), a series of artist books Roth made between 1961 and 1974. Each book was completed using traditional sausage recipes, but the meat was replaced with a book or magazine. Tiravanija furthers Roth’s conceptual work by hanging up a clothes line of sausages, made of meat, 18 shredded Thai constitutions, and one copy of Thilo Sarrazin’s controversial anti-immigration book – clearly stating a critique of the current immigration laws dominating throughout the globe. [Saskia Neuman]

From EYEOUT’s column in MITTESCHÖN – May 2012

27 April – 16 June 2012

Renowned for his solid-light film installations and great influence on London’s 1970s avant-garde film scene, Anthony McCall celebrates the latter in his show at Sprüth Magers. In Early Performance Films, we are invited to revisit seminal works from McCall’s oeuvre, such as Landscape For Fire, 1972. The artist, disenchanted with the limitations of video art in the 1970s, went on to deconstruct film, creating form from its curved white lines. But the importance of these earlier works is far from lost. The meditative state created by the later, more sculptural work is evident in his first films. The sharp, deafening noise, matched by stunning visuals, emotes performative aspects. Creating temporality whilst simultaneously engaging our curiosity. [Saskia Neuman]

From EYEOUT’s column in MITTESCHÖN – May 2012

Photo credit: Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London

 

 

 

17 March – 5 May 2012

Martin Eder’s recent work is an amalgamation of sculptures, figurative oil paintings, and works on paper. Some is currently being shown at EIGEN+ART in the exhibition Asymmetry. With gruesome titles such as My Laughing Sister You Are Death, the sculptures – abstract punctured aluminum heads – seem caught in time and movement. A nude woman’s torso in oak, wraith-like and sealed in flesh-colored wax, contributes to the otherworldly conversation that engages the works with one another. Soft, although uncanny, the beautiful sculpture does stray from the themes Eder has previously explored. But the large painting, a rainbow-colored woman‘s backside, honestly investigates the female form, creating a realistic and menacing image to counteract the manner in which woman a often portrayed. [Saskia Neuman]

From EYEOUT’s column in MITTESCHÖN – May 2012

Photo credit: Courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin, photo: Uwe Walter, Berlin

10 March – 21 April 2012

The works by Nikola Röthemeyer that make up her solo exhibition at Kuckei + Kuckei are gorgeously delicate, stylized, and full of interesting and thoughtful content. With the basic conceptual incentive of examining the process and stages of silk-fabric production, Röthemeyer seems to run wild with semi-surreal depictions of women working, sometimes whimsically assisted by animals, and surrounded by deconstructed furniture and production machinery. Röthemeyer's technique is impressive and beautiful, with some of the large-scale drawings on paper containing unfinished elements – gentle suggestions of what might be there, or about to appear. Glass vitrines with small character studies and sketches anoint the exhibition with a slightly more abstracted depiction of the elements in the large works, giving the viewer plenty to look at. [Jordan Nassar]

From EYEOUT Berlin

Photo credit: Courtesy Kuckei  + Kuckei, Berlin

10 March – 21 April 2012

For his fourth solo exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake, German photographer Michael Schmidt exhibits his new series 89/90. It’s comprised of photographs taken in 1989–90, but the content becomes almost secondary to the pairing and arrangement of images by the artist. Schmidt created this series by going back into his “working proofs” from 22 years ago, and drawing from the images therein to create a contemporary series that re-contextualizes the pictures so many years later. Examining the length of the Berlin Wall during its destruction, Schmidt’s images of objects and architectural spaces relate to one another, each image providing its neighbor with a sounding-board, creating a visual back-and-forth that adds yet another new element to photographs that someone else might have stored away in an archive. [Jordan Nassar]

From EYEOUT Berlin

Photo credit: Galerie Nordenhake Berlin

2 March – 21 April 2012

In Miriam Cahn’s Familienraum + andere Arbeiten (Family Space + Other Works) the artist invites the viewer into a contemplative state of mind. Although a figurative painter, in her latest solo exhibition at Meyer Riegger Cahn plays with surrealist associations of figuration, engaging with the image of the body, seen vibrantly in her wildly colorful oil paintings. Cahn candidly invites the viewer to participate in her own artistic process by including us in her intimate dazzling dream world. With retrospective intentions, the twelve oil paintings and four drawings in the show span from 1969 to 2009. They all originate in abstract portraits of the Cahn family members, and are set in the intuitive landscape of the artist’s own vivid imagination. [Saskia Neuman]

From EYEOUT’s column in MITTESCHÖN – April 2012

Photo credit: Meyer Riegger, Berlin

 

 

9 March – 21 April 2012

In A-Z, at Klemm’s, Adrian Sauer employs photography and video to communicate the context in which we absorb information. By addressing, in his piece A-Z Brockhaus, 2012, the lack of prominence of the outdated German encyclopedia Brockhaus. Sauer initiates discourse on the validity of information and how it is sourced. Juxtaposing 38 meticulous photographs of the Brockhaus cardboard cases with his ephemeral video work, Laptop/Screensaver, 2011, the artist is subtly challenging how we appropriate information: from the “confirmed” encyclopedic knowledge provided by Brockhaus to the mysteriously sourced information from Internet sites such as Wikipedia. Sauer illustrates the semantics of the image, highlighting how in modern imagery the photograph is partly created by the digital cameras’ calculations, and therefore invented. Sauer poignantly questions its autonomy and, as a result, its true meaning. [Saskia Neuman]

From EYEOUT’s column in MITTESCHÖN – April 2012

Photo credit: Courtesy Klemm's, Berlin

3 March – 14 April 2012

Gerold Miller’s work, as featured in his solo exhibition, Set., at Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, is a play on the compilation of form, color, and contrast. The artist challenges our senses with shocking reds and pinks, and soothes our eyes with more restrained grays and silvers. The chromatic appearance of the reliefs, as the stainless steel bases of the pieces have been professionally lacquered with precision using industrial car lacquer, demonstrates that, via clarity and diminution, the works are a reply to the torrent of media we endure, and provide a respite for the viewer’s gaze. Recalling Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square, Miller’s aesthetic is that of minimalist conceptual art, omitting forms of personal expression for an environment of stark differences through the rigorous installation of the works. [Saskia Neuman]

From EYEOUT’s column in MITTESCHÖN – April 2012

Photo credit: Courtesy Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin, photos: Jan Windszus

18 February – 14 April 2012 

Primarily working in sculpture and installation, Monica Bonvicini, in her second solo exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler, takes a closer look at objects, materials, and professions that are classically associated with men and masculinity, and merges that with an underlying fetishism in a societal exploration that raises a range of questions. With nickel-plated chainsaws, black-rubber-coated construction-worker harnesses, and bright light installations spelling out the phrases "SATISFY ME"and "BUILT FOR CRIME," Bonvicini underscores the concepts of strength, weight, and size. On the other hand, Bonvicini also includes more delicate works on paper. These include NeedleKnows, a series of 200 needle-nose plyers embroidered on paper in red yarn and suggesting further play with gender roles – in this case highlighting the paradox of a feminine manifestation of a masculine object. [Jordan Nassar]

From EYEOUT Berlin

Photo credit: Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin