10 exhibitions not to miss at this year’s Gallery Weekend Berlin

The annual Gallery Weekend Berlin confirms the city’s status as a leader in the contemporary art world and thriving hub for creatives and curators alike. Now in its 15th year, the festival promises to showcase an array of established and emerging talents as well as highlighting new art spaces across the German capital. Directed by Maike Cruse, the event is also supported by Olivier Audemars, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for Swiss watch manufacturer Audemars Piguet. With 45 galleries participating in this year’s event, the city is poised to host a multitude of chic opening soirees, unique performances and exhibitions that are sure to spark artistic inspiration aplenty. Our tip? Plan ahead. To make things a little easier for you, here is our top 10 guide of what not to miss on this year’s bill.

The Black Image Corporation at Gropius Bau

The Black Image Corporation, conceived by artist Theaster Gates, comprises an interactive exhibition that delves into the archives of the historic African-American media powerhouse Johnson Publishing Company. Visitors will be able to peruse copies of Ebony and Jet, two magazines established in the 1940s and 50s that represented some of the first major platforms for the representation of black culture in the United States, as well as create their own compilations from an archive of more than four million photographs that explore the aesthetic and cultural symbolism of African American identity. The Gropius Bau has also invited artists Vaginal Davis, Mac Folkes and Wu Tsang to create parallel works responding to and reflecting on the archives.

25th April – 28th July 2019
Opening reception: Wednesday 24th April, 7pm
Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin

Camille Henrot at König Galerie

Camille Henrot explores themes of power and oppression in her film Tuesday, which will be shown in the former chapel of König Galerie’s main gallery space, the St. Agnes church in Kreuzberg. The film, shot almost entirely in slow motion, depicts scenes of race horses being groomed before and after training, juxtaposed with footage of jiu jitsu fighters locked in combat. The contrast of tender sensuality and dynamic action plays with the build-up of tension and alludes to the struggle between dominant and submissive subjects, whose roles become at once intertwined and interchangeable.

27th April – 26th May 2019
Opening reception: Friday 26th April, 6-9pm
121, Alexandrinenstraße 118, 10969 Berlin

Henrike Naumann at KOW

KOW will be bidding farewell to its gallery space on Brunnenstraße with a solo exhibition by Henrike Naumann entitled Ostalgie. The exhibit explores the historical roots of a particular strain of nostalgia that is instantly recognisable to those who have lived in or are familiar with the history of socialist East Germany. An oxymoron unto itself, ostalgie forms the basis of a fascinating insight into the daily lives of those living under the communism and the collective memory of this time as influenced by the media and historical progression. Naumann’s installation features everyday objects from the GDR as props that have come to symbolise a moment frozen in time and the appropriation of historical memory.

26th – 28th April 2019
Brunnenstraße 9, 10119 Berlin

Fiona Banner at Galerie Barbara Thumm

British artist Fiona Banner’s work, which comprises an interwoven practice of text, sculpture, drawing and installation, places a focus on the problems and opportunities represented by language. As a follow-up to her Condo exhibition at The Breeder in Athens last year, Galerie Barbara Thumm will be displaying an on-site installation that encapsulates the artist’s preoccupation with wordscapes and the process of publishing.

26th April – 4th May 2019
Opening reception: Friday 26th April, 6-9pm
Markgrafenstraße 68, 10969 Berlin

James Lee Byars at Kewenig

While there are multiple galleries that will be presenting brand new exhibitions over the weekend, there are of course participating venues that show existing works by established artists. One such display is The Palace of Perfect retrospective by late American artist James Lee Byars, which has been held at the Kewenig gallery since February. The exhibition highlights Byars’ long fascination with Japanese culture, with pieces bedecked in gold and silk that embody the artist’s quest to find perfection in an imperfect world and embody the rite and ceremony involved in the human quest for beauty in the broadest sense of the term.

16th February – 29th June 2019
Brüderstraße 10, 10178 Berlin

Beth Letain at Peres Projects

The second solo exhibition of Berlin-based artist Beth Letain at Peres Projects, ultrapath, will open during Gallery Weekend. The artist’s series of large-format abstract paintings feature Malevich-style forms of brightly coloured stripes, squares, stacks, and slabs. While her minimalist canvases strike a joyous and playful chord, the spaces in between the suspended blocks of colour connote certain emotional nuances and highlight a more considered approach than the viewer may perceive at first glance.

26th April – 21st June 2019
Opening reception: Friday 26th April, 6-9pm
Karl-Marx-Allee 82, 10243 Berlin

Bernar Venet at Blain|Southern

Blain|Southern Berlin presents Bernar Venet’s Indeterminate Line and debuts the artist’s Continuous Curve series. Rising to prominence in the late 1960s as a key figure in New York’s avant garde scene, the French artist — now in his late seventies — provides a conceptual foundation for his sculptures that draw on elements from mathematics and scientific equations. Venet’s large, linear sculptures of rolled steel question the uneasy relationship between order and chaos, fluidity and control.

26th April – 22nd June 2019
Potsdamer Straße 77–87

Stefanie Heize at Capitain Petzel

Capitain Petzel presents its first exhibition of Berlin-based artist Stefanie Heinze, Odd Glove. Themes such as psychology, gender and socialism feature heavily in works that embrace imperfection and detail the extraordinary elements of ordinary events. Heinze has created a series of fantastical, lurid canvas paintings that depict fluid metamorphoses and are at once perverse and subversive.

26th April – 8th June 2019
Opening reception: Friday 26th April, 6-9pm
Karl-Marx-Allee 45, 10178 Berlin

Nativist Americans at Sprüth Magers

For Nativist Americans, an exhibition by artists duo Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, German power house Sprüth Magers presents a display of photography from three collaborative series spanning the artists’ work over the past two decades. Each focussing on the appropriation of Native American culture, the works deal with ideologically charged material that hints to a larger polemic in American politics and the hypocrisy of modern cultural norms.

27th April – 27th July 2019
Opening reception: Friday 26th April, 6-9pm
Oranienburger Straße 18, 10178 Berlin

Kaspar Müller at Société

Société presents a series of works that question the semiotics and cultural symbolism of contemporary objects in the exhibition Why Always Me? by Swiss artist Kaspar Müller. Müller investigates the tropes and myths that define modern culture with a display of motifs that range from kitsch to highly stylised. Previous exhibits by the artists have featured garlands of glass-blown orbs, books stacked like playing cards and traffic cones perched on Styrofoam heads.

26th April – 15th June 2019
Genthiner Str. 36, 10785 Berlin

Gallery Weekend Berlin runs from April 26 – 28th 2019. You can find more information about participating galleries and exhibitions here.