The Clockwork Gallery is a string of superlatives: it’s Berlin’s smallest exhibition space (two panels, about 100 x 70 cm each), it has the longest opening hours (24-7), and it has the largest audience (even if half of them don’t realize they are looking at art). Occupying two sides of a revolving advertising light cube below a four-sided clock, the nonprofit project founded in 2007 by two artists and now run by one of them, Alexander Hassenpflug, offers an ambitious program with an impressive artist list and exhibitions that change every month. Like the other companies advertising their services on the cube, Hassenpflug has to rent ad space for his exhibitions, but in Berlin, even media agencies seem to have a soft spot for art so he gets special rates. Every work is produced exclusively for the project and is installed by the same team who normally hang advertising posters. Sometimes they make mistakes, like hanging works upside down; sometimes they are given special instructions by the artists, to turn the translucent glass panes inside out to create a special light effect, for example. The project doesn’t only make use of advertising space, it is an advertisement itself, for how the creative power of a private initiative can bring art to the public.
Clockwork Gallery, Mehringplatz/metro station Hallesches Tor