Unusual art venues
You can also discover new art spaces during this year’s Berlin Art Week.
“All of Berlin is art” could also be the slogan for this year’s Berlin Art Week. Museums, galleries, private collectors and artists will be informing the public about the status quo in art city Berlin in a series of exhibitions, events and fairs. Visitors will be able to attend the fairs “abc – art berlin contemporary” and “Positions Berlin – Art Fair” as well as over 20 institutional shows.
Art lovers will perhaps also discover some rather unconventional exhibition venues: Patrick Ebensperger’s gallery, for example, today exhibits art where once the mortal remains of the German resistance fighter and Hitler assassin were consigned to the flames – namely, in Wedding Crematorium. And why not exhibit art in a bunker? In 2008, media tycoon Christian Boros acquired a gigantic bunker that was built in 1942 in Reinhardtstrasse in the Berlin Mitte district. Concrete walls that are several metres thick and radiate a certain military charm now house parts of his collection.
“Side shows” all over Germany
However, “side shows” of this kind are not only found in Berlin. In Halle, for example, a former newspaper kiosk in Reileck is being used as a four-square-metre showroom. Exhibitions and events at the side of the road are making it a centre of art communication and a social meeting place that aims to spontaneously attract interested passers-by. In the 20th century, poultry, pigs and sides of beef still used to be cut up in the meat market at Karlsruhe’s slaughterhouse. Today, at most, you will only find art critics dissecting their prey. The Bruch & Dallas Gallery has been located in Ebertplatzpassage, a dilapidated pedestrian underpass in the heart of Cologne, since 2009. With its enormous front-facing windows, the space functions as an oversized showcase.
In Hamburg, a branch of the Affenfaust Gallery operates in the broad aisles of a former supermarket. Die Bedürfnisanstalt is a non-commercial exhibition space in an old public toilet in Hamburg-Altona. Today the former “public convenience” provides room for painting, sculptures, photography, readings, performances, theatre and music. It therefore often pays to leave the beaten track of the German art scene.
Berlin Art Week from 15 to 20 September 2015
