Berlin (part 3)
Tuesday and Wednesday were mostly about seeing art: galleries, Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof. I should have taken pictures of the art we saw for reference, but I didn't, so I have only my brain.
Fun fact: You can’t get an americano in most Berlin cafes, but latte macchiato are way better than in Toronto. Normally I don’t even like them.
Kunst
There is a lot to see, although there was little that really impressed us. The Biennale was particularly lackluster. Though the curators don’t claim any driving thematic, to me there was a clear focus on the varied relationships between people and the urban environment, both as space and as a regulator of culture, interactions and movement. Barriers, building, history and change. Unfortunately, most of the work felt like the thesis work of promising but immature and materially inexperienced artists.
Although it's cool to be all suspicious of the almighty art institution, I love a good contemporary museum. None so far beats the one in Frankfurt, but Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin’s contemporary art museum was fun and huge. My personal favourites in the permanent collection were Beuys, Anselm Keiffer, Rauchenburg, and Cy Twombly. The Wolfgang Tillmans retrospective was fantastic. I regret not picking up a book of his work; I find most photography boring, but I’ve had a thing for him for years and I’d like more time to sit with it. His work is hard to describe, incredibly varied, but strangely engaging. The greatest impression I am left with is “everything is interesting”: an eclipse, breakfast, light from a church widow repainting the image it falls upon, colours and shadows. There was also an exhibition of a couple of existentialist photographers whose work I had only seen once or twice before, and really enjoyed (can't remember their names though...). Large format, mysteriously manipulated photos of the paunchy middle-aged couple making faces, floating, falling and interacting with stiflingly 70’s interiors, a forest, white minimalist sculptures. I have always been into retrospectives and solo shows; I really enjoy seeing the full breadth of an artist’s preoccupations.
Tiffany lives right in the middle of one of the main gallery districts, so we visited galleries almost every day. There were still many we missed, windows we peeked into when they were closed and then never made it back. As compared to Toronto, the sheer quantity and variety was impressive. There was everything from intricate paper-cuts to cubes made from what appeared to be shards of razor-thin glass, and an amazing immersive installation consisting of long white labyrinth, barely lit, an interplay of shades of grey, the dull ambient soundtrack mixing with the rumble of the S-Bahn above the gallery. Also a couple of smaller, more DIY galleries with beautifully detailed etchings and a paper tower inhabited by tiny painted birds.