In a way, it’s common knowledge that Berlin is an extraordinary hub for art and design. Curators, artists, art dealers, PR birds and photographers pour everything they have into it all year round, not even mentioning special occasions such as Gallery Weekend. Bold statement, but no matter whether you’re an industry insider or just an art enthusiast, the offer can be overwhelming sometimes. Overwhelming in a sense that one might start forgetting how special this hub actually is. What Berlin needs in times like these are events that pull you back out of that lazy blindness. Events where you need to start thinking again, wondering what your personal opinion actually wants to tell you about all the cool stuff you’re seeing. Luckily, yesterday, there was one that did exactly that: the opening of Partie Une at Galerie OM.
But before we dive into what made the opening so interesting, let’s cover the hard facts. Partie Une is an inaugural exhibition featuring a carefully curated selection of design pieces, art and interior architecture, put together by Julian Zacharias Eide. The focus of the selection: materiality. But not in a singular way. In a way that creates a spatial dialog between the floor, the room, the rough surface of a chair, the furry softness of a wall and the rusty colours of woven leather (more on that later).
The exhibits that create this irritating yet deeply interesting conversation include designs by well-known names such as Martin Margiela, Maarten Baas and Jean Prouvé. Latter is known for his prefabricated modular buildings, his work with Le Corbusier and design classics such as the Standard Chair (1934). Also featured was Pierre Chareau, the French architect behind the masterpiece House of Glass (1928–1932) in Paris, who worked primarily with bold combinations of materials. Another, more recent presence was the Berlin-based artist Marten Herma Anderson, whose ceramic vessels and organic lighting objects explore a tension between fragility and structure, between ornament and function.
The gallery itself, founded by Moana Thies and Oscar Gröne, operates on a commission-based model. The pieces on show are sourced in close collaboration with collectors and partners. But what’s even more interesting about their concept, is the fact that Galerie OM will host a series of pop-up exhibitions and cultural events in Berlin and later in Paris and Milan. It’s a concept that could spark that same awakening from lazy blindness elsewhere.
Now that you have the full picture, we can finally get into the atmosphere, the crowd, the thoughts. The more personal experience. We sent our managing editor Nisha Merit to the opening, and this is what she came back with:
“Hardly have I ever seen a crowd so visually attuned to a space and its works as at the opening of Galerie OM. The predominantly monochrome palette, the shades of black fabric Berlin is known for, seemed almost an extension of the exhibition itself. Inside, walls draped in black velvet created the feeling of a cosy straitjacket, suspended somewhere between confinement and sensual comfort.
While walking through the space I pass a small stool with a delicious uneven surface and colour evoking the depth of a cold ocean on a hot summer evening. Further in: a sofa, composed of individual leather strips with more void than surface to sit on. Magnificent, especially with the painted panther throwing the wall atop.
To be honest, for my taste, the design pieces that evening were not given enough room to breathe or to stand fully within their own material manifestations. Something I would have loved to see, given the quality of the materials – not screamish but demanding in conceptual frameworks. Their materials hovering between the haptically seductive and the productively confusing, which I thoroughly enjoyed!
And I wonder about the space between things, between people and thought. When is proximity needed and when distance? The room made it into an interesting friction to dive into.
On my way out, I passed by a trio-sofa-chair combination wrapped as if prepared for a house being left alone for a long time, something between anticipation and massive space. Its social-historical commentary made me smile, and with that I stepped out into the cities nights-cape.”