Who was it who said, “After all things, art remains.” Well, maybe that was just us. Gallery Weekend Berlin, which runs from April 30 to May 2, continues to anthologize a who’s who of the art world today. It is yet another card up the sleeve of the many people who claim Berlin as the creative capital of the world, a city defined and continually reinvented by its artists. Because we’re still in the middle of this godforsaken pandemic, the shows have been fully digitalized, which is great news if you aren’t in Berlin or just don’t feel like leaving your apartment. Sleek has put together a list of the five openings that we’re most excited about, which promise to expand and interrogate us, whether we’re inside the galleries or enjoying from the comfort of our screens.
Alvin Baltrop, “The Piers (man sitting on windowsill)”, n.d. (1975-1986), Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York
Galerie Buchholz – Alvin Baltrop
An exhibition of photographs by Alvin Baltrop, a working-class African American man who recorded life in New York’s Hudson River Piers in the 1970s and 80s. Today home to upscale parks and luxury malls, the piers were once known as a site of a clandestine gay culture, a place where men would gather to sunbathe, sleep, buy sex, or simply seek privacy from a world that rejected something fundamental about them. Baltrop’s photography dances the line between documentary and voyeurism; through these photographs we experience a hunger to see things as they are, to remember them as they happened.
30 April – 19 June, 2021
Tue-Fr 11-18, Sa 11-16 / Fasanenstraße 30, 10719 Berlin
Paula Rego, Caritas, 1993, Courtesy the artist © Paula Rego
Esther Schipper – Group show, L’Invitation au Voyage
The paintings in this show, which includes pieces from (bear with us) Sarah Buckner, Cui Jie, Cordula Ditz, Almut Heise, Hannah Höch, Leiko Ikemura, Tala Madani, Isa Melsheimer, Sojourner Truth Parsons, Paula Rego, Shahzia Sikander, Tsai Yi-Ting, and Yeesookyung, bring us into these artists’ fantasy worlds. In the group show format, we experience fantasy not only as the product of individual minds, but as a collective tendency, a common will towards beauty, towards, freedom, towards what is beyond us.
28 April – 27 June 2021
Tue-Sa 11-18 / Potsdamer Strasse 81E, D-10785 Berlin
Heiner Franzen, Installation simulation of W A K E, 2021
Ebensperger – Heinar Fraznzen, W A K E
Let’s face it – we’re suckers for a good location. This exhibition is installed in the labyrinthine chambers of the Crematorium Wedding, with Franzen’s video works installed against a raw brick backdrop, the juxtaposition of which itself promises to provoke and intrigue. We’re curious to see how the experience is communicated in the digital tour as well, as the works play with movement and physicality.
30 April – June 2021
Plantagenstrasse 30, 13347 Berlin / Open by appointment
Paolo Salvador, Pablo y el Jaguar, 2021, Courtesy Peres Projects, Berlin, Photographed by: Matthias Kolb
Peres Projects – Nicholas Grafia, Free Verse Spirit // Paolo Salvador, Resonancias oníricias
A double-header of side-by-side solo exhibitions at one of Sleek’s favorite galleries in Berlin. This will be Grafia’s first solo show and Salvador’s second solo show at Peres Projects. Grafia’s drawings and paintings train their focus on experiences that haven’t been given a place in western memory or discourse. Salvador’s paintings draw from the deep tradition of religious iconography and examine the artist’s Peruvian identity. The pairing of these young artists’ exhibitions constitutes not only the annunciation of a new generation of artists, but also of a fresh and more expansive understanding of history itself.
30 April – 4 June 2021
Mon-Fr 11-18 / Karl-Marx Allee 82, 12043 Berlin
Geuhmyung Jeong, Upgrade in Progress, installation view, Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, 2020. Photo: Rolando Paolo Guerzoni
Klemm’s – Geumbyung Jeong, Under Maintenance
Jeong’s exhibition transforms Klemm’s into a laboratory where humanoid robot creatures are made available for our examination. The artist develops these “toys” by combining mannequin parts with traditional automotive technologies. These works, which are part display and part performance, don’t seem to issue from any particular thesis, but rather emerge as products of a world in which the human and the machine are increasingly porous distinctions.
28 April – 05 June 2021
Tue-Sa 11-18 / Prinzessinnenstrasse 29, 10969 Berlin
By Moses Allan Hubbard