T+T transferNet: Virtuelle Mauer Re-con Structing the Wall. Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin. DE, By craniv boyd.

T+T transferNet: Virtuelle Mauer Re-con Structing the Wall. Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin. DE, By craniv boyd.

 

Perchance, at long last, there may be a market for a video game that is, about escaping from the iron curtain, the Long Way Back 2010 a movie produced by the Polish Film institute about a heroic long walk, undertaken by a handful of escapees, out of a Gulag in northern Siberia, could be an indicator for popular demand for such a gaming experience. The Artist Team T+T transferNet, whose key figures are, Tamiko Theil and Thereasa Reuter, have made, a three dimensional world of where the Berlin Wall was, in a cloyingly small, section between, Kreuzberg and Mitte, where the death strip and east wall and west wall was. One hopes for a more complete version, of the project, one day placed in a National Historical Museum, in Germany.

 

The art work, as a virtual reality art work, has many merits, being that it seeks to provide people of today, who know how to maneuver a joy stick on a video game console, the experience of walking through East Berlin, near Heinrich Heine Platz yet as an artwork on public view, Virtuelle Mauer Re-con Structing the Wall, is unfortunately buggy. 

 

The key concept, of a Berlin then, or a walking tour around the borders of Warsaw pact nations with out the proper documentation to leave, the bloc, is great, I for one, hope that it could be a video game, one day, with similar memorial and pedagogical portent as Virtuelle Mauer Re-con Structing the Wall takes to task.

 

The location of the virtual reality world that was sadly an all to recent reality for many living in East Berlin, is situated in the places where today's children walking about in Berlin can pass un-hampered, that it makes apparent what, part of the experience it was to be in a city, occupied by the peoples army of the German Democratic Republic, despite the current state of the project, it nevertheless induces a powerful feeling of empathy for those people who were living in East Berlin who were told at one time or another, when they got close to the wall, I paraphrase, the historically accurate script of the VR east German Border trooper, "No, with those Papers, you cannot cross the border, please leave the protective zone peaceably or else…".

 

I learned something, and had a laugh of relief, maneuvering about in this virtual Berlin wall reconstruction.   By craniv boyd. 

East side Gallery, Mühlen Straße, Berlin Friedrichshain. DE, by craniv boyd.

East side Gallery, Mühlen Straße, Berlin Friedrichshain. DE, by craniv boyd.

 

East side Gallery as an exhibition platform, is evocative of the most antithetical sentiment to those expressed by the shimmering steel wording Upper East Side Berlin some where on Friedrichstraße in center city Berlin.  Platform, as a term, is perhaps inadequate to describe the state supported; just as much the, tourist haven, as the corner of Fredrichstraße and Unter den Linden, but for other, and hopefully more profound, reasons, East side Gallery, of Mühlen Straße, in Friedrichshain. Platform as adjective, is not enough, simply because this gallery on the east side is just a wall. But that concrete and asbestos, wall now covered, in vibrant paints, is the wall, of Berlin: part of what remains intact of it, at least.

 

On that section of the late, iron curtain that the East Berliners could not, and were definitely barred, from approaching, defacing or vaulting. Seeing East side Gallery, on the anniversary year of: fifty years, after the wall went up, and just over twenty years, since it came down is, a cathartic experience, if there ever was one. People who are passing through Berlin stop, take pause, and more often than not, take a picture with them and that Berlin wall, or the wall only, comme-ça.

 

The task of my small report, is to write about nine, of the individual paintings, by individual international artists, the world over, painted, custom fit at is were, and site specifically, for the East side Gallery, in Friedrichshain back in 1990. Tailor made, if you will, for the cultural climate of Germany reunifying.

 

i

A mural that was painted with the intention of healing some deep wounds, two national flags superimposed on over the other, German Federal Republic, and Israel, the blue star of David and the two blue bands are on top, layered over the Black Gold Red of Germany's current national Flag. As painting it is simple, as a healing concept, or a dream for healing, Gunter Schæfer, with this mural lays claim to a title of artist hoping for peace in the world. The strength within the simplicity, in this large image speaks volumes.

 

ii

 

Гoспoди! Помоги Мне выжить средиэтой смретнойаюбвц! Reads the title of a realist mural of two older gentlemen kissing. Copied after a photograph the mural, by artist Dimitri Vrubel, is an powerful image of two Russian men overwhelmed with love is fun painting: strange, odd, and healing. The thick eyeglasses frames, that one man wears in this monumental kiss, painted, at the  size of a small drive trough movie theatre, are back in Vogue some how, and the seriousness of the fall of the soviet union and end of cold war era is treated light heartedly by the artist Dimitri Vrubel.

 

 

iii

 

A kind of simple geometric abstraction that looks naïve in his restricted choice of local color, artist, Gábor Simon, and a painting title Space Magik, is a throwback to an era when teenagers had to more often than not leave the go to arcades instead of reach into their own pocket for a smart mobile telephone to play a video game. The hues of red black white grey and yellow are all play fully arraigned into a painting that looks both like optical at, and advertisement of a new version of space invaders. 

 

iv

 

Kosmopolitanism, a futuristic turn of phrase embedded amidst decorative faces people depicted who are mythical looking, Schamil Gimajew, and artist from central Asia, has painted one of the most elaborate, cluttered looking, and fun to be around sections of the wall. The trauma of the east west divide the Utopian hope of worlds beyond freezing conflicts is all there to see, and be overwhelmed by in a mural that is predominantly black white with dashes of primary colors, after the wall fell who can be afraid of red, yellow or blue?

 

v

 

Rats in a maze, grayed out humans in a labyrinth, blindfolded cube-heads with, twisted rubbery necks, sausages and meatballs and spaghetti, skewered on the cutlery that protrudes from the crowns of their box-heads, on bodies wearing bespoke evening dress, a floating blob-like creature with large baby blue eyes and red, open soda cans, a gas nozzle, held by a white hand from above, pump, like the one for your automotive vehicle, drips, drops of oil into a soda can in the free floating monstrosity with sensitive irises. All this, are images to be seen in the panel by the Chilean painter, César Ochaga. The work is overripe with a wealth of imagery, and the illustrations of the ideologies possessed by capitalism and communism are just there like too many buoyant facts, César Ochaga, painted a picture that looks like beat poetry.

 

 

vi

 

             A tribute, to a modernist painter who had a rough time of having some of his artwork shown to a German public, Willi Berger, paints on the wall a sketch for a rayonist, stained glass Church window, in red yellow and blue, inspired by musical works of the most well known eastern German, J.S. Bach. The schematic for the stained glass window, in question is by his mæstro, an artist who was censored by the double whammy of Hitler regime followed up by, German Democratic Republic.  The work is presented and as with much art that has been censored by authoritarian governments, people wonder why block this? Willi Berger calls forth, in his mural dedicated to the memory of one of his own influential art teachers, that censorship in the arts should never, ever, be permitted again.

 

vii

 

Distopia and its serious discontents, Ana Leonor Rodrigues, an artist from the less, land massive nation on Iberian peninsula, Portugal, paints a nocturne of a grouping of people in protective clothing wearing gas masks walking and seated in a black desert.  This nightmare vision calls to mind the planet that David Bowie left behind when he fell to earth back in the mid 1970's, when he stared in that psychedelic science fiction film. It's the environment, stupid! Could almost be a sub heading or alternate title for this work that portrays a group of survivors in a wasted-land, of a Nuclear Holocaust. An event that did not transpire which was un-doubted feared throughout the interim of the cold war.

 

viii

 

A large bald headed naked man, disrobed totally with the exception of a pair of shoes that look suspiciously like doctor martins, grips his head and falls back into a flaming pit of hellish bright worry, this lone male falling figure is contrasted with dull as dirt wearing shapeless ashen grey clothing of cubist looking people corralled like a rat heard, in a maze with out cheese. The maze rat association is underscored furthermore, by artist Ulricke Zoft, author of this mural, present's art that could be interpreted as a dypthic, to illustrate symptoms of ideologies of the supposed belligerents in the cold war. Individual existentialist worry of a naked unabashed capitalist pitted against, an oppressive looking rat race with no rewards like communism. With the people of the maze who are lucky enough to metamorphosed into a free flying cubist rat that could send a shiver down the spine of Pablo Picasso.

 

ix

 

The east side of the Berlin wall was, in its later years, during the life of the German Democratic Republic, painted, grey with white evenly spaced rectangles.  Schwartze Deutsche Lesbe, literally Black German lesbian is an artwork painted to look like the wall is still there yet only the eyes have been fooled and a deep to mid, mustard yellow, shroud bearing, a black naked woman with closely cropped hair. She looks like a Virtuvian man, she holds the same pose, but has only one pair of martyr legs spread eagle. The painting like the majority of the other murals on East Side Gallery were painted and repainted by artists who dedicated their paintings to someone some cause some ideal. Schwartze Deutsche Lesbe, as a, mural with idealist import a public work of art, dedicated, like the majority of the art at East side Gallery, to common lofty ideas and people who have at times, borne the brunt of aggressive, authoritarian un-free cultures, is a public art work, protected to an extent by the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, for people, who visit the Hauptstaat, to see and today's inebriated young near Warschawer Street to do what they do, with many of the other public surfaces in Berlin, observe appreciate respect or deface. By craniv boyd. 

Hus Mit Navn. Untitled: Yellow Black wall paint, at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien. Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin. DE, By craniv boyd.

Hus Mit Navn. Untitled: Yellow Black wall paint, at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien. Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin. DE, By craniv boyd.

 

A child goes to school, for a violin lesson, or a guitar lesson. That youth walks down a hall, which was built with the intention, of being a house to save the lives of children. That wide hallway has a new coat of paint. One more layer of pigments in a long continuum, of the buildings life. A child, walking today, on the ground floor of the large brick building with the address on Mariannenplatz Two, the building that is home to Kunstraum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien, would see a goofy, tour du force, by the Danish artist, a painter who adopts the artist moniker of Hus Mit Navn or, in the English language, what’s my name?

 

If Matt Groening, the author, of the Simpsons, or Ren & Stimpy, of Nickelodeon fame, were given a chance, to shine on the walls of a wing in a Cathedral, or another large space of learning, or convalescence, then you would have some thing similar to the funny looking, and joyous wall paintings featuring bizarre characters that, Hus Mit Navn, has painted in a wing of a former children’s hospital. The walls are in the bright optimistic process yellow of a post it notes. The use of the black paint, extended to it’s limits, of grey, to create and image characters, archetypical such as: the wounded lion, the acrobatic & clever mouse, the worrying and run-away pencil, the mean looking yet vulnerable, nose bleeder, the diamond shaped strong man, the dancing woman, all fallible contradictory types that in their nonchalance eek out a smile from, the corners of the most down cast pessimist’s mouth. 

 

The high contrast Spartan usage of color, binary style, just like in computing, on or off, black or yellow, with the vision of Hus Mit Navn, provides, a walk down a hall peopled by big, odd freaks each with their own individuated wall space between portals set at regular intervals. Its fun to look at and the dude wearing a baseball cap, sports shirt, with really long wavy rubber band arms takes up more space, he cant help poking the eye of a crouching lion.

 

The super upside-down mouse doing yoga is bare bottomed. The creature’s posterior, is where the head of a normal standing figure should be, and mouse or no, mouse; the beast, has long legs that jut outwards, creating an upside-down L form, Г.  Just for finesse and punctuation the smiling acrobatic mouse character has a bad case of wet gas, a dark black mushroom cloud that could appear to some, like a heart shape, hovers over the butt. Smelly.

 

The comical large scale frieze by this younger Danish talent, who also has a more,  colorful work, (more  from the rainbow, than just black and yellow) painted on the entirety of a five story Berlin Kreuzberg walk up firewall painted with a weirdo walking and speaking with a white speech bubble « Hus Mit Navn” is funny to a point, goofy and awkward and friendly as it may appear in the skill, manor of execution, the wall paintings inside the former children’s ward are, as public works, both awe inspiring and, plainly inspiring. By craniv boyd.

Rainer Fetting Neue Bilder/ New Works: deschler. [ ] GALERIE 19 april- 1 Juli 2011 August Str 61. Berlin 10117. DE, by, craniv boyd.

Rainer Fetting Neue Bilder/ New Works: deschler. [    ] GALERIE 19 April- 1 Juli 2011 August Str 61. Berlin 10117. DE, by, craniv boyd.

 

For dripping wet figurative expressionist painting of men at the beach, amongst other subjects, look to the knock out, painting show, by German painter Rainer Fetting, inspired by vacation time spent, at an small German island on the North sea, Sylt. Rainer Fetting just happens to be one of the seasoned generation of painters who kept, making large, rich, and nasty oil images despite falling in and out of love with the nineteen eighties New York art scene, and the fickle tastes of said city. The fact that, as a painting survivor rather than art world casualty Fetting has this gallery exhibition of, the artists, recent, unapologetic leisure time genre painting coupled with a retrospective at a sizable, State museum, the Berlin State museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture. Rainer Fetting could be seen, by many, as one lucky, wild expressionist, enviable painter.

 

The works at his Berlin gallery, are of the sea, men surfing, bathing, playing ball, a wild half naked man holding dead albatross in his bare hands, a corpulent woman wading in the water, threatening swells and atmospheric captures of Fantastic moments island life offers, that could look like a snapshot, were it not for the means of both expressionist material laden painting method, and the imagination of Fetting, exemplified in the synthetic nature of his choice in subject matter, hardcore gestures, and bevy of materialistic paint application.

 

Rainer Fetting is a painter, whom it would appear judging by the paintings, shown in this exhibition alone, has the looks of a man who likes to throw paint around. This caviler approach to figurative painting inclusive of quasi-random aggressive paint throwing was part of what contributed to the look of, the late English painter, Sir Francis Bacon. In a painting like Fetting's Ball Players, blue paint splatter marks are much the more; integrated in the expressionist-mimetic, weave of the painting's image. Blue thrown paint, is also the wetness of the North Sea where the young playing men flip and tumble in their watery game.

 

The larger format works of distanced seascapes and vantage points that show the meeting point of tourist trap small town and unruly ocean, call to mind disaster movies or sea disaster situations, people who see movies do not have to look too deeply toward Hollywood, for films like 2012, or the, opening 15 minute passage of the more sensitive Hereafter, 2010 directed by C. Eastwood, for the ocean, having a severe temper tantrum. The expressionism and the massiveness of the gnarly sea as contrasted with the little people wearing bright yellow rain slickers, is droll, not in a demeaning way, but there is a pleasant irony at hand in the large paintings that Fetting has painted newly of the sea.

 

The exhibition has a street level and a basement level, in the basement level there are more intimate, smaller format painted studies, that have flowers, and torsos of men in bikini, still lives and neoclassical interests of the male semi nude, via expressionism the loose, yet deft, hand of the painter is to bee seen in the beauty which he seeks to portray for his new series. By craniv boyd.  

Antje Majewski; At Neugeriemschneiderberlin, June 10- august 13, 2011, Linien strasse 155, 10115 Berlin. DE, by craniv boyd.

Antje Majewski:

the guardian of all things that are the case, among others:

a clay teapot in the form of a human hand

a shell

a pot made of fragrant wood,

contains one black ball or two glass eyes

a buddha's hand citron

a hedge apple, also called osage orange

 

At Neugeriemschneiderberlin, June 10- august 13, 2011, Linien strasse 155, 10115 Berlin. DE, by craniv boyd.

 

For larger format, vertically oriented, rectangular naturalistic paintings, of handsome men, and beautiful women, that are painted with spare, thin usage of paint, look to Linien Street in center city Berlin, for Antje Majewski's one-person exhibition at Neugeriemschneider.

 

The list of things that preface this, my exhibition report, is the title of both paintings shown in the gallery and singular instances of the oeuvre of German Born, artist Antje Majewski. For resisting the dominant post war painting norm of the Bundesrepublik, that of, testosterone saturated expressionism in painting. Majewski deserves kudos for her bravery in working with pigment suspended in oil, on Belgian linen, in a method so far against the German grain, for celebrated art.

 

Nevertheless there is little breath of life to be found in these capable paintings, the sitters for the portraits are rendered with dignified accuracy that is just if not more unemotive than a 16 century Dutch still life. I take that back the undemonstrative neutral facial expressions of the portrayed people in under a dozen paintings shown at Neugeriemschneider, are so bland and stiff lending more joy of life to the objects, and things that accompany them in the diligently painted artworks. There is little to be found in the sensuality of these representations of attractive people that look vaguely young and creative, old master paintings, from the Netherlands, of ripening fruit, or the goods from the fishmonger begin to look far the more sexy when brought against Majewski's paintings.

 

Barefoot woman clothed in white wearing leggings doing some kind of advanced yoga position or another on a carpet with a large shaped thing, placed on her midsection. A seated thin cleanshaven man, red curly hair cut above the shoulders, with folded arms and crossed legs, looks rheumy eyed, out from a room that appears as if, it is, a spread in Interior decorators weekly or Architectural Digest, or some such trade publication for the interior architect or interior decorator.  A woman with raven black hair cut in a bob, wears ethnic clothing, and one has the impression that much more care, and emphasis has been placed on what the people are wearing, what kind of a space they populate and what things are around them, than how the painting it self is painted.

 

The paintings could be understood as a kind of seamless collage. One young isolated adult after another is presented in a living or leisure space codified as, luxury creative. All objects in the paintings are both mysteriously symbolic. The superficial and flat egalitarian treatment of the objects in the picture plane, via means of thin paint, that looks far too dry, does not contribute a flare for drama. The images are of course staged for the exhibition public and the art collectors, or public collections, supportive of this kind of artwork, Spartan naturalism a tad south of horror vaucii, however the paints are applied methodically and with out flourish, and despite largeness and ambition of format, the overall sensibility the paintings offer is not one strange to more portable and prevalent fashion magazine æsthetics. by craniv boyd.  

Francesco Finizio, Sylvie Ungauer: ver/schiebungen, curated by, Ulrike Kremeier, 22.07. - 20.08.2011 Kunstverein Tiergatren Galerie Nord, Turmstr. 75 10551 Berlin. DE, by craniv boyd.

Francesco Finizio, Sylvie Ungauer: ver/schiebungen, curated by, Ulrike Kremeier, 22.07. - 20.08.2011 Kunstverein Tiergatren Galerie Nord, Turmstr. 75 10551 Berlin. DE, by craniv boyd.

 

A non- for- profit municipal art exhibition venue holds one, refreshingly light hearted, art exhibition, with two artists who both have some connexion to Bretagne and the city of Brest, in France. "ver/schiebungen" places the works of artists Francesco Finizio, and Sylvie Ungauer, on display and both artists work divergent, on their own, yet rare enough for contemporary art practice, both of their current art creation involves drawing, to some level.

 

Francesco Finizio, has made a silent auction for a set of: low cost cheap materials. Objects that all-though ad-hoc, in both: appearance and utilitarian function, fill the larger frame of a previous, questionably, site specific, artwork created, and documented in France. That work is a projected video loop, in the same room as the objects for sale, and from still photographs that cycle through the video loop, one can see the playful, many lives, of all those random lots, which lean against the wall in a room in Kunstverein Tiergatren Galerie Nord. Stones, blankets, newspapers, a plywood case, a plywood dis-assembling crucifix, plastic basins, coffee maker, wash powder and other items all reconfigured by the artist, over a seven day period, in a store front space on a street Rue des Etables 1, in Brest, a city in the Celtic part of France, with the purpose of transforming inconspicuous commercial space in a shrinking city, with the economy of means and rigor of method available to a true artist. One day the space is a laundry mat, the wash basins for hand washing clothing, another day the window announces that the space is a church, the same plastic basins are filled with rocks as a decorative element for the altar of gods house for that day, come back on a different day and the space is advertised as a mini-golf course, the plastic tubs, both with and without stones are ramparts and barricades for the mini golfer, a quick hotel, or funeral home, press office or peep show, or parking lot, scaled for skate boards rather than cars. Francesco Finizio, with only the disparate and trashy things, self-selected, and on view in the silent auction has created, archetypes of spaces where life in our current age happens. The humour and absurdity in the artwork is side bar, to the Spartan means, that illustrate and create different spaces with the exact same stuff.

 

Equally if not more bizarre, the artworks of Sylvie Ungauer, which span the crafts of drawing, wig making, video filming, and basket weaving as sculpture. Exacting drawings from fashion periodicals are set with a strange twist, a familiar word in an all too specific letter form, Psycho, and a pouting woman in stilettos wearing a hat? No, she has on instead, the house that Norman Bates lived in in A. Hitchcock's classic thriller. Le Mepris, as drawing by, Sylvie Ungauer, features a floor seated barefoot woman in a mini dress, she looks headless, but rather the, cult like-iconic via J.L. Godard, film, Italian Razzionalizmo style villa on an island covers the head of the bare foot drawn woman. She looks like she could be looking like B. Bardot in that 60's era film right now.

 

Quizzical also, the large woven from magnetic tape interconnected sculptures that look like Pyramids, Towers and Ziggurat, the interest of millinery and wig making become more clear when presented together with a video from the year 2006, by Ungauer. This video loop, is, in my mind just as much about strange youthful people, wearing black wigs with hair fibers that reach their knees, with nothing to do in a smallish city in sea-side France, as the iconic and brutal looking modernist architecture that the wig wearers take pause to walk past and observe. The video has a sound track with faintly recognizable thirty seconds and under samples of music that could fit in a spaghetti western film. The three characters mill about Brest, and are all braided to on another in the large wig all three wear. There movements are carefully measured and sloth like through out the video, which takes the form of, dawn to dusk «a day in the life of» and compresses it,with the wig bearers seated leaning against the wall of a building on a public street, like beggars, weary of asking for alms. By craniv boyd. 

Joëlle Tuerlinckx. Geologie einer Arbiet: New and Old Paper-Assemblage in einer Kurzen Orangen Retrospective, Galerie Christian Nagel-Berlin,Weydinger

Joëlle Tuerlinckx. Geologie einer Arbiet: New and Old Paper-Assemblage in einer Kurzen Orangen Retrospective, Galerie Christian Nagel-Berlin,Weydinger Str 2/4 10178 Berlin. DE, by craniv boyd.

 

 

Dry humorous right brain cerebral current art is what Belgian artist, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, exposes in her short Orange Retrospective at Galerie Christian Nagel-Berlin. The exhibition takes place, in a spacious store front gallery space, that can accommodate larger artworks, but is still not quite big enough to house unwieldy installations with massive components. The space of, Galerie Christian Nagel-Berlin, and the Orange Retrospective, by Joëlle Tuerlinckx, are a comfortable match, for she offers yet one more installation as gesamtkunstwerk via post-modern Belgian means not dissimilar to, artist and fellow countryman, M. Broodthaers, and like the art of Broodthaer's, the current instance of Tuerlinckx's art work is not adversely affected by mid sized modernist white cube shoebox display settings.

 

Fluorescent Orange wallpaper, pinned with thin headless nails, covers the gallery walls. If you hunt, this particular orange color, would be called safety or blaze Orange, approaching the wall paper closely but with an appropriate measure of distance, your eyes can pick up on the Ben-day half tone dot pattern, used to produce the look of a brick wall painted white, printed on each section of the orange paper. This is an Impressive optical feat, considering that the paper is orange, the ink printed on it black, yet the photographic source, because of lighting when the picture was taken, calls to mind, a white wall.

 

On top of the brick wall: wallpaper, metal panels hung floating from the wall has photo reproductions of book pages. The dry fare of minerals and natural science, small magnets joyously hold small paper objects affixed to the metal surfaces. There is minor anarchic frisson that occurs when seeing, overblown science textbook, juxtaposed with odd, functionless paper artworks, small process of stunning in that viewers don't know if they may be here to see the origami, or the textbook art work, based on a different disciplines text book.

 

Confusions ensue further when stepping back and viewing the card-board boxes, painted solid colors on the inside, empty paint canisters, with solid colors that match the cardboard box innards, are wall mounted high above head level, lending an: "if paint buckets can fly than, anything can happen now" atmosphere. Yes per chance, visually tucked away, the metal limb that holds the at first glance, floating paint bucket, is when seen reassuring, but nevertheless, total art works that parley in playful dry references, to dryer harder sciences, are flat visual puns.

 

An archive of yet one more impersonal universe, an almost in-utter able image based narrative, as artwork, if you like structuralism and art work that needs an essay to argue that it is this kind of art, than Geologie einer Arbiet: New and Old Paper-Assemblage in einer Kurzen Orangen Retrospective, is your cup of Belgian tea. By craniv boyd.