Berlin Art Week‘s appearance each September re-energizes the city’s art scene after a summer hiatus, with the opening of dozens of concurrent exhibitions in galleries and institutions, as well as Berlin’s major art fairs, Art Berlin and Positions. We’ve put together a list of highlights for this year’s Art Week, running from September 13–17th.
HAEGUE YANG @ KESSELHAUS, KINDL – CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
Opening: Saturday, Sep. 09, 2017; 5–9pm
Am Südhaus 3, 12053 Berlin
Once a year, the KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art invites an artist to present a single work in the imposing, twenty-metre-high Boiler House. This year the artist Haegue Yang, who lives in Berlin and Seoul, is realising her first institutional presentation in Berlin with a large-scale work, title ‘Silo of Silence – Clicked Core.’ In the Kesselhaus installation, she will use her most well-known material: window blinds, which have become a signature of her work. Memories of the aggressive industrial development in South Korea in the 1970s and ’80s continue to shape her oeuvre today and inform this site-specific piece as well.
HARUN FAROCKI @ NEUER BERLINER KUNSTVEREIN – N.B.K.
Opening: Wednesday, Sep. 13, 2017; 4pm
Chausseestraße 128/129, 10115 Berlin
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein is showing the exhibition ‘Harun Farocki: Mit anderen Mitteln – By Other Means’, which assembles his film installation works. Simultaneously the first retrospective of Harun Farocki´s complete cinematographic work takes place at the Arsenal Cinema. Harun Farocki (1944–2014) is one of the most important and internationally influential German filmmakers. His oeuvre comprises more than 100 experimental and documentary films, essay, short and feature films. In addition to these parts of the Retrospective, Savvy Contemporary will present the research exhibition ‘El Usman Faroqhi Here and a Yonder: On Finding Poise in Disorientation’. The group project takes Farocki’s personal name change as a point of departure to reflect on wider issues of nomenclature that go beyond geographical and temporal frames. Artists, filmmakers and intellectuals “from here and from a yonder” ruminate on naming as philosophy, mnemonic tool, as disorientation, on re-naming and its political and social implications.
‘PORTRAIT OF A NATION’ @ ME COLLECTORS ROOM
Opening: Wednesday, Sep. 13, 2017; 1–6pm
Auguststraße 68, 10117 Berlin
The exhibition ‘Portrait of a Nation’ offers a glimpse into the creative practices of 50 contemporary artists from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Founded in 1971 the UAE is today home to some 200 nationalities. The exhibition offers a rare glimpse into its little-known history and diversity while considering significant contemporary questions of heritage and identity. Against a backdrop of rapid development and globalisation, the works explore complex ideas of modern nationhood, visiting urban and rural landscapes and examining major issues of unity, spirituality, and language.
BORIS CHARMATZ @ VOLKSBÜHNE BERLIN/TEMPELHOF
Opening: Thursday, Sep. 14, 2017; 4pm
Platz der Luftbrücke 5, 12101 Berlin
As the first event under the new Volksbühne Director Chris Dercon, ‘A Dancer’s Day’ by Boris Charmatz is a highly anticipated performance premiering during Berlin Art Week. In ‘A Dancer’s Day’, Charmatz intersects the day of a dancer, revealing their structures and routines: warmup, rehearsal, performance, rest, taking over the space and the dance floor. Visitors follow the dancers within the expansive airport hangar, and have the opportunity to rehearse sequences from Boris Charmatz’ new dance ‘10000 Gestures’ with the choreographer. All participants enjoy a meal together before a group slowly emerges from the collective to introduce a new movement ritual.
ART BERLIN
Opening: Thursday, Sep. 14, 2017; 4–8pm
Station, Luckenwalder Straße 4–6, 10963 Berlin
The newly founded art berlin is a partnership between abc art berlin contemporary and Art Cologne. As a further evolution of abc, the art fair takes place for the first time in September 2017: art berlin presents around 110 international galleries from 16 countries at Station at Gleisdreieck. In addition to emerging as well as established galleries focusing on contemporary art, one will also be able to discover modern art.
FESTIVAL OF FUTURE NOWS 2017 → ∞ @ HAMBURGER BAHNHOF
Opening: Thursday, Sep. 14, 2017; 7–11pm
Invalidenstraße 50–51, 10557 Berlin
Over a four-day period, a dense cloud of creative energy and spontaneity will erupt and break free, passing by and hovering over Hamburger Bahnhof. The Festival of Future Nows 2017 → ∞ – a cooperation between the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Olafur Eliasson and his Institut für Raumexperimente—invites a young and diverse crowd to engage with the unpredictable nature of performance, action, music, interventions, dance, experiments, movement and perception exercises. Spontaneous choreographies, musical disruptions and overlooked encounters invite various forms of audience participation happening at flash-mob-like speed.
MIET WARLOP @ HAU – HEBBEL AM UFER
Opening: Thursday, Sep. 14, 2017; 8pm
Tempelhofer Ufer 10, 10963 Berlin
HAU Hebbel am Ufer presents a showcase of three works by the Belgian artist Miet Warlop. In her performative works Warlop makes visual art using the means of theatre, developing “living images”. These are located somewhere between absurd theatre and outlandish tableaux vivants. The texture of things is central to Warlop’s work, as is creation and destruction against all economic reason. For the very first time, the three works that Miet Warlop herself calls “portraits of a decade”— ‘Mystery Magnet’, ‘Dragging the Bone’ and ‘Fruits of Labor’—can now be seen together in one retrospective.
POSITIONS BERLIN
Opening: Thursday, Sep. 14, 2017; 6–10pm
Arena, Eichenstraße 4, 12435 Berlin
Positions Berlin art fair will take place this year from September 14–17th, once again taking over the spacious halls of Arena Berlin along the Spree. The fair prides itself on presenting artistic positions that account for the diversity of the Berlin art scene, as well as contributions from international exhibitors. This year, galleries from 15 countries are represented, including the USA, Canada, Japan, and will show a diverse range of works of contemporary and modern art throughout the fair.
MONICA BONVICINI @ BERLINISCHE GALERIE
Opening: Friday, Sep. 15, 2017; 6pm
Alte Jakobstraße 124–128, 10969 Berlin
Conceived for the large exhibition hall of the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin-based artist Monica Bonvicini‘s installation investigates the term facade and its function. The show runs parallel to the 15th Istanbul Biennale, in which the artist is also participating and features elements from both cities – Berlin and Istanbul. The institutional viewing space is often the subject of Bonvicini’s work: site-specific, power-conscious and gendered allusions to the norms of architectural and artistic modernism quite literally operate on the boundary between artwork and spectator.
GEOFFREY FARMER @ SCHINKEL PAVILLON
Opening: Saturday, Sep. 16, 2017; 7pm
Oberwallstraße 1, 10117 Berlin
During Berlin Art Week, Canadian artist Geoffrey Farmer will open ‘The Care With Which The Rain Is Wrong’, his first solo exhibition in Berlin. For this occasion, he will present two large-scale, site-specific installations in the Pavillon’s rotundas in the souterrain and on the first floor, such as ‘Boneyard’, which will use photographs as sculptural material. Fascinated by art and cultural history of humankind, Farmer explores its narratives and imageries. By meticulously collecting images, objects and sounds of different subjects over often long time periods, Farmer develops detailed installations that remain in a continuous state of transformation.
Exhibition Info
BERLIN ART WEEK
Sep. 13–17, 2017
Full program: berlinartweek.de
Multiple Venues
