Entries Tagged as 'Germany'

Thomas Demand’s Camera at Hamburger Kunsthalle

June 8th, 2008 · No Comments · Artists, Germany

Demand1

Demand2

Demand4

Demand5
[detail]

Demand6
[detail]

Thomas Demand’s installational photo show at the Hamburger Kunsthalle is at the front guard of conceptual photography. Steeped in scholarship and narrative — Demand has re-created the site of the burglary in the Embassy of Niger in Rome from which the stationary paper was stolen that then was used for forged contracts which the US intelligence services used as evidence to support the invasion of Iraq — Demand’s video and photos are still decadently visual. In his trademark trompe l’oeil of Office-Depot stylized empty rooms constructed entirely out of paper and cardboard, painstakingly photographed, Demand damningly shows this house of cards that was the catalyst for a senseless war.

Thomas Demand. Camera
4 April to 6 July 2008
Hamburger Kunsthalle
Hamburg, Germany

Bremen, Germany

June 6th, 2008 · No Comments · Germany

Bremen1

Bremen2

Bremen3

Bruce Nauman at Hamburger Bahnhof

June 4th, 2008 · No Comments · Artists, Germany

Brucenauman
Bruce Nauman, Coffee Spilled and Balloon Dog

Lets face it: when you’re young you just can’t get everything. For me, one of those things was Bruce Nauman. There is just so little to it. But oh my, so much. His work Coffee Spilled and Balloon Dog contains a man trying unsuccessfully to make a balloon dog, and a dropped coffee cup. Both images suggest failure, yet failure never looked so good.

 

Joseph Beuys at Hamburger Bahnhof

June 2nd, 2008 · 1 Comment · Artists, Germany

Beuys1

Beuys2

Beuys3

Of course, there was an entire Beuys wing at the Hamburger Bahnhof.

Anna and Bernhard Blume at Hamburger Bahnhof

June 1st, 2008 · No Comments · Artists, Germany

Blume1

Blume2

Blume3

Blume4

Hamburger Bahnhof is Berlin’s museum of contemporary art. From their website:

Artists Anna and Bernhard Blume, born in 1937, have significantly extended the genre of the staged photograph, and they number among its most renowned exponents internationally. In their frequently multipart, large format, black–and–white photoseries, this artistic couple stages temporal sequences within which they themselves act as protagonists. The scenes are often reduced, estranged, and above all odd: order and chaos seem to mutually condition one another, role–playing and convention inhere in each object, conditioning modes of behavior and provoking resistance.

Inspiring.

World’s Largest Cylindrical Aquarium

May 31st, 2008 · No Comments · Germany

Aquarium2

The Aquadom, at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin, is the largest cylindrical aquarium ever built. 900,000 liters of seawater, 2600 fish, and a glass-enclosed elevator that runs through the middle. Apparently, two full time divers are on staff to keep it going.

Maryam Jafri at Alexandra Saheb

May 28th, 2008 · No Comments · Artists, Germany

Sa_1a
Maryam Jafri, Staged Archive (video still), 2008 [image courtesy of Galerie Alexandra Saheb, Berlin]

Sa_3a
Maryam Jafri, Staged Archive (video still), 2008 [image courtesy of Galerie Alexandra Saheb, Berlin]

Maryam Jafri’s exhibition at Galerie Alexandra Saheb in Berlin (April 26 – June 13, 2008) took me by surprise. Jafri, a solid storyteller and a kind of shaman, works in the traditions of theater and sculpture: with heavily built sets, props and lighting.

Staged Archive seems to float between nonfiction and the surreal, finding a location solidly supported by personal narrative and experiences I would expect everyone shares, regardless of age, race or gender, although each of these categories is wrestled with in the work.

Adrian Sauer at Klemm’s

May 25th, 2008 · No Comments · Artists, Germany

As1
Adrian Sauer, Atelier (video still), 2008, 23:45 min., ed. 5+1 a.p. [image courtesy of KLEMM’S, Berlin]

As2
Adrian Sauer, Atelier (video still), 2008, 23:45 min., ed. 5+1 a.p. [image courtesy of KLEMM’S, Berlin]

As3
Adrian Sauer, Atelier (video still), 2008, 23:45 min., ed. 5+1 a.p. [image courtesy of KLEMM’S, Berlin]

Under the category of “this-is-not-what-it-seems-at-first-glance,” Adrian Sauer’s video installation, Atelier at Klemm’s in Berlin, begs the audience to underestimate and then be surprised. As the video slowly circles the artist’s studio, closer examination reveals that everything in the video is not real. All surfaces are computer processed and lack depth. The effect is beyond mere posterization and suggests the landscape is either computer modeled or Flash-vector traced from video: either way, a generous reward. The exhibition also includes several photographs of similarly created environments. Atelier closes June 21, 2008.

Berlin Day 1: Museums

May 24th, 2008 · No Comments · Germany

B1
Peter Eisenman, Monument to the Holocast Survivors, 2004

B2
Peter Eisenman, Monument to the Holocast Survivors, 2004

Perhaps the best piece of public art I’ve ever seen. As a visitor, you enter a grid of coffin-size monoliths that get increasingly deep (or said another way, the path descends into them). Once inside, people appear and disappear unpredictably.

B3
The Berliner Dom Cathedral

B4
The Bust of Queen Nefertiti, Altes Museum

B5
[unrecorded item, presented extremely well] Altes Museum

B6
Pergamonmuseum

B7
The Market Gate of Miletus, Pergamonmuseum

B8
Alte Nationalgalerie

B9
Alte Nationalgalerie

B10
Guggenheim Museum Berlin

Arrived in Berlin

May 23rd, 2008 · No Comments · Germany

Germany1

Here’s where we had dinner, pardon the shaky camera hand, we’ve been up for a while (just got off the plane from Dallas). In brief: oh my, Berlin is beautiful.