10 under the radar shows to catch at Berlin Art Week 2019

Returning this week for its eighth edition, Berlin Art Week is one of the biggest events in Berlin’s contemporary art calendar. While this year’s programme is packed with big hitters—including No Photos on the Dancefloor at C/O Berlin, Walking Through Walls at Gropius Bau and the return of the mesmerising New Infinity dome with artist collective Metahaven, there are plenty of shows that you might have missed amid all the buzz. Here are our picks of under the radar—but no less thought-provoking and entertaining—shows to catch from this year’s programme.

Magic Media-Media Magic

A pioneer in video art, German curator Wulf Herzogenrath is partly responsible for bringing video art into the cultural mainstream. After he started to curate and collect works in the 1970s, Herzogenrath rapidly accumulated what would become one of Germany’s most extensive video art archives. Couple this with his position as the Chief Curator of the National Gallery Berlin, and Herzogenrath’s integral role in popularising video art becomes clear. Once strictly for private consumption, Herzogenrath’s glittering archive was opened to the public for the first time in 2018 at the Akademie der Künste. For Berlin Art Week, the exhibition Magic Media-Media Magic is billed to offer a unique insight into both Herzogenrath’s private archive and the rise of video art.

Claude Mirrors with works by Victor Man, Jill Mullheady and Issy Wood

A collection of paintings by artists Victor Man, Jill Mullheady and Issy Wood, “Claude Mirrors is a story of decapitated truths of identity, of dark and cryptic worlds and hallucinatory tableaux,” says artist Agnes Gryczkowska. ‘Decapitated’ certainly feels fitting in what is promising to be Berlin Art Week’s eeriest exhibition (in fact severed heads abound in Man’s paintings. The common thread here is horror, and Claude Mirrors is a celebration of all things spooky. From Mullheady’s use of electric greens and blood reds, to Wood’s portrayal of aliens, idols and tragedy, Claude Mirrors is a creepy visual feast..

Friday Night Positions

Returning for its sixth edition, POSITIONS Berlin has long been a highlight of Berlin Art Week. Located in Hangar 4 at Berlin’s iconic, abandoned Tempelhof Airport, POSITIONS Berlin will offer its visitors a range of attractions. From talks by artists to exhibitions themselves, the showcase will present some of the most intriguing and important international voices in contemporary art. What’s exciting here is the mix of old and new as established artists sit side by side with upcoming creators. If it’s anything like its previous editions, POSITIONS Berlin will prove to be one of the most necessary and diverse displays at this year’s Berlin Art Week.

Intersectional Feminism 

“WE NEED STRATEGIES OF SOLIDARITY AND ACTIONS!” reads the battle cry of event-stroke-protest Intersectional Feminism Strategies. The event does what it says on the tin, offering a space to unite art-week goers to reflect on and plan for the future of the art world. No field is as densely defined by privilege than the art field, say the event’s organisers, and the aim of Intersectional Feminism Strategies is to topple these stereotypes,diversifying and equalising art once and for all. 

WangShui

The amorphous studio WangShui is cloaked in mystery. In the past, they have largely displayed work in Asia and America, leaving Europeans to agonise over and imagine exactly what it is about this studio that has garnered collective wonder among viewers. In their first solo presentation in Europe, however, WangShui will present three moving-image installations at Berlin Art Week in collaboration with the Julia Stoschek Collection. The works, created between 2016 and 2019, will explore “intimate modes of transformation”, with a focus on architecture, live subjects and everyday detritus. There is a hallucinogenic quality to these creations; from a disorientating video of metamorphosing silkworms, to a mythical account of Chinese “dragon gates” with alleged shapeshifting powers. The arrival of WangShui to Berlin Art Week has ushered in a sense of hushed, eager anticipation—and deservedly so.

Lexicon and The Revolutionary—Iman Issa

Slightly straying from the theme of this list, Iman Issa is far from ‘under the radar’. The lauded Egyptian multi-disciplinary artist has exhibited works at major museums such as the Tate Modern, Solomon R. Guggenheim and the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona. Issa is, however, too pivotal to this year’s Art Week to not include in a write-up. Working primarily in installation, Issa reinterprets historical objects on an intimate scale. Her creations are imbued with a sense of the political and personal, as she explores the power of exhibiting in relation to both academic and cultural institutions. For Berlin Art Week, she will exhibit Book of Facts at daadgalerie, and will showcase a selection of sculptural works from her acclaimed Lexicon series as well as  her sound installation The Revolutionary.

Hyperdrüse—Anna Virnich

Smell is a jumble of contradictions. It is a form of communication, and yet impossible to articulate. It is both concrete and abstract, and it is for these reasons that artist Anna Virnich is fascinated by it. In her installations, the Berlin-based artist uses materials that exude natural aromas and odours (think exotic plants, beeswax, oils), thus filling her exhibition spaces with familiar and beguiling scents. The experience is multi-sensory and intoxicating. 

Your Choice

Always longed to curate your own exhibition? This year at Berlin Art Week, the Sammlung collection will be granting the wishes of picky pundits and putting the power into visitors hands. In their event Your Choice, the organisers are allowing the viewers themselves to choose the art in this exhibition. Presented with a wide array of artists (Wim Wenders, Christian Marclay and Jenny Holzer  are all on offer), visitors can select and view works from a collection of single-screen videos. As art exhibitions become increasingly interactive and immersive, Your Choice similarly blurs the boundaries between curator and visitor.

She’s Reading 1—Jenna Westra

Following the success of her work in the group exhibition ‘thoughts on tactility’ in Berlin last January, Brooklyn-based artist Jenna Westra returns to the German capital with her first solo exhibition. She’s Reading 1 is a confronting series of photographs in which Westra presents the viewer with a distorted rendering of the female form. As Westra skilfully dislocates images of women’s bodies, the viewer is left with a distinct sense of pain and discomfort. It makes for arresting and urgent viewing and Westra’s photographs succeed in quietly radicalising our perception of the female figure. 

Das Jahr 1990 freilegen—Jan Wenzel and Anne Koenig

Leipzig publishers Jan Wenzel and Anne Koenig could not remember 1990. “Most people can quickly recall the year 1989,” the duo explain, but “1990, on the other hand, seems like a blind spot in the memory.” The exhibition Das Jahr 1990 freilegen is based on Wenzel and Koenig’s book, which explores the perplexing year that was 1990 in Germany. Interspersed with text, images and voices, the exhibition delves into the intricacies of this often overshadowed year, resulting in an exploration into the power of photography and the way in which it triggers and assists our memories.As we become the most photographed, documented, Instagrammed generation, this timely and provocative exhibition questions how photography will alter our perception of history, and influence our understanding of social upheaval.

All photos courtesy of Berlin Art Week.

Berlin Art Week 2019 runs from 11 through to 15 September.