Zlatko Kopljar 12 September-10 November 2012 Gallerie Isabella Czarnowska 10969 Berlin. by craniv boyd.

Zlatko Kopljar 12 September-10 November 2012 Gallerie Isabella
Czarnowska 10969 Berlin. by craniv boyd.

A man in a stunning shimmering suit. His glowing evening wear emanates
reflected light and he can be seen walking on a train platform at
Warsaw central train station, or in New York in Times Square or
digging a cube shaped void in the middle of the night in central
europe somewhere. This man this artist is Zlatko Kopljar and he works
and is based in Zagreb, his series of K16, K17 and K15 are witty works
of high definition video art delivered by an artist with a supreme
poker face.

What is this man doing walking alone at night over the BQI bridge, or
standing solitary in Times square. He is making or being a work of
art. What is this Kopljar doing when he lays a wreath at a site of one
of the 20th centuries worst atrocities, in a concentration camp in
Poland together with a retinue of actors who are en rôle as background
crowd making the wreath laying ceremony look official and legitimate?
Kopljar is making art, and this work provokes a powerful question
about the individuals responsibly to think about the Holocaust and its
ramifications.

K16 is by far the most mysterious of the video works because the act
of digging is central to it, and the shape is of a hollow black cube,
pregnant in its numerous associations, for instance for the Islamic
world, but also of course for the sub culture of high culture, modern
art practice being made in the current day. by craniv boyd.

Ai Weiwei in New York Fotografien 1983-1993 Martin Gropius Bau 15.10.2011-18.3.2012. by craniv boyd.

Ai Weiwei in New York Fotografien 1983-1993 Martin Gropius Bau
15.10.2011-18.3.2012. by craniv boyd.

Arguably one of the better exhibitions that has occurred in Berlin for
some time was the exhibition of photographs taken by the Artist Ai
Weiwei during his ten years of study and residence in New York city.

During the years that Ai Weiwei lived in New York, there was much that
was not good, clean and Disneyland. Much of his photography of the
period shows this gritty side of downtrodden or rather subaltern
pending your inclination, along with the community of poets and
intellectuals that Ai Weiwei surrounded himself with in those years of
which notably Allen Ginsberg.

Much of the images are student work, but to write this fact is a
disservice to both Ai Weiwei, and students of art in New York city,
because what is demonstrated by his long standing process of taking
analog pictures is a commitment to art and art forms, living for the
contemplation of art, and contemplation of art as a way of living life
well. Hard things to achieve by taking a few snapshots.

Predominantly; Weiwei sets up many of his prints as pairs couples and
leaves the sprockets of the Eastman Kodak Tri-Ex film stock apparent
in the final print of his images, hence the pairing and from the
artist, imposed binary structure Weiwei develops a signature print,
and a specific look to his art photography. by craniv boyd.

Julian Schnabel Deus ex Machina

Julian Schnabel Deus ex Machina
28.April-28 Juli 2012,
Contemporary Fine arts Am Kupfergraben 10 10117 Berlin,
by craniv boyd.

A powerhouse of an exhibition was to be seen this past summer in
Berlin, Germany.
It was of recent paintings by the renowned artist and film director
Julian Schnabel. All of the paintings adopted an extra large format
and two works in particular took on portent of the myth of the United
States of America and the countries nascence in a funky way that
included: purple stain painting that could look like a haze of purple
gas for some "experienced" folks, a stuffed albino buffalo set against
a kabuki-esque backdrop of great generals wiping away their tears with
the union flag, and of course a toy soldier looking General Washington
whom receives the English with red coats. Of this pair a smaller
canvass of 178 by 195 cm titled "the Sky of Illimitableness" The
larger of the pair retained a panorama wide format, the Albino Buffalo
abound a rock that looked to be spray painted garish colors of mutant
slime green and noxious safety pink, and in the hills of the back
drop, behind the similar tropes of purple stains and United States
Kabuki History a fleeing pair of black people in the woods. The couple
are faceless, nevertheless they are there setting forth to build that
great union, far afield from the great men of history with their candy
colored pageantry.

The exhibition was one fit for a king, not only because of the two
floors in Chipperfield and Associates building on the Coper grave in
center city Berlin a stones throw from the Pergamon alter, but because
what Mr. Schnabel is painting, portrait pictures of a younger
generation of artists over large adverts of women and the clothing
they must wear, is relevant. White lines with swirls of faint tainted
hues over textures big, and wood like speak to both a sensitivity to
materials on the hand of the artist perhaps, and insensitivity and
bombast concerning materialism that advertisement may contain. by
craniv boyd.