|
Ana Finel Honigman
|
|
Interview with Kenno Apatrida
by Ana Finel Honigman
2009-08-16
Berlin, Aug. 2009 : Despite the chaotic appearance of his sculptures, installations and paintings, Kenno Apatrida strives to make sense of our fragmented society and creates works of profundity from our cultural debris. Individual sculptures contain dolls, puppets, phonographs, antique ceramic tiles, tear-outs from political magazines and propaganda from the Third Reich, old stamps, vintage family photographs, warped canvases clotted with paint, clusters of framed paintings, devotional icons... [more]
|
Picking up the PIeces
by Ana Finel Honigman
Morgan Belenguer, Luis Berríos-Negrón at Program e.V.
July 9th, 2009 - August 1st, 2009
Posted
8/1/09
Harvard Design alumni Carson Chan and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga conceived their Program (http://www.programonline.de/) non-profit project space in Berlin as a critical forum for examining the significance ofarchitecture. For each exhibition, artists engage the special character of the spacious white-walled ground level of the former Russian-owned Hotel Newa to explore the space's identity as a gallery and, by extrapolation, the gallery's relationship to Berlin.
For "Immediate Archaeol... [more]
|
Toy Story
by Ana Finel Honigman
Heinz Schmoller at Komet Berlin Galerie
June 26th, 2009 - August 1st, 2009
Posted
7/26/09
Heinz Schmöller turns to toys to address political realities that often overwhelm adults. Schmöller's "Exploitation" show at Komet Berlin is built around a kiddie-pool with a cheery yellow toy lawn mower spraying thin streams of water in the air, Light-Bright boards displaying images of political persecution and inequality, and a giant colorful sculpture of every child's fantasy gone sour.
The little pony-tailed red-haired girl in Schmöller's central sculpture buckles under the w... [more]
|
Back to the Future at Berlin's SUPERSTORE
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
7/25/09
Superstore
Almstadtstrasse 43
10119 Berlin
Traces of the eighties' aesthetic are all over Berlin. There is
something always there to remind you. However only Mitte's SuperStore offers
the eighties in its most highly concentrated and pure form. The
era-specific vintage store's selection is a carefully edited array of
designer and genre flea-market finds for men and women. All pieces are
in stellar condition. And the basement-level shop's decor is authentic
but not overpowering.... [more]
|
Alive
by Ana Finel Honigman
Kaj Aune, Wolfgang Ganter at Maud Piquion
June 26th, 2009 - August 24th, 2009
Posted
6/30/09
Maud Piquion's new gallery on Brunnenstrasse is a one-room storefront with a sweet, inviting yellow and white awning and an installation
by Wolfgang Ganter involving a mummified cat and dog in the window. The show of paintings, collage, sculpture and "Paganini non ripete" a video by the Norwegian artist Kaj Aune, playing an insane male musical genius is part of "Resurrection," the
latest three-person show in a series of exhibitions Piquion has organized with artists originally represented by Brun... [more]
|
Ali Baba-like treasure trove at PSM
by Ana Finel Honigman
Tomma Abts, Richard Aldrich, John M Armleder, Monika Baer, Agnieszka Brzezanska, Verne Dawson, Jules de Balincourt, Philippe Decrauzat, Katharina Grosse, Wade Guyton, Daniel Hesidence, Richard Hoeck, Nathan Hylden, Tony Just, Jacob Kassay, Jutta Koether, Michael Krebber, David Malek, John Miller, Bernd Ribbeck, Thomas Scheibitz, Anja Schwörer, Amy Sillman, Josh Smith, Charline von Heyl, Kelley Walker, Jens Wolf at PSM gallery
June 3rd, 2009 - July 18th, 2009
Posted
6/25/09
With "Cave Paintings" at the PSM gallery, Bob Nickas has arranged a taster for "Painting Abstraction," his survey book on the subject that will be published with Phaidon in September. Nickas cherry-picked a vastly varied selection of artists for the show after months of studio visits in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Berlin. What the contributors all share is the ability to raise constructive questions about the nature of painting and to push and play with technique while also providin... [more]
|
Writing about the writing on the wall
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
6/20/09
Benjamin Wolbergs'
"Urban Illustration Berlin: Street Art Cityguide"
(http://www.amazon.de/Urban-Illustration-Street-Guide-Berlin/dp/1584232919)
Critic and curator Emilie Trice writes that, " Berlin is the graffiti mecca of the urban art world." And a recent New York Times article confirms Trice's assertion with the observation that " The city’s skyline might be defined by a Sputnik-era TV tower, bombed-out churches and the ghost of a certain wall that once split the German capital.... [more]
|
The wisdom of the ancients
by Ana Finel Honigman
Benoit Maire at croy nielsen
May 1st, 2009 - June 13th, 2009
Posted
6/8/09
In "Le mépris," Jean-Luc Godard used one man's struggle to retell "The Odyssey" in a new medium as a metaphor for creative alienation. Benoît Maire draws similar parallels between the myth of Medusa and the artist's relationship to what he or she perceives and depicts. Marie's installation "Drawing Attention" consists of two weathered old chairs and a pile of antique books analyzing Greek mythology's most famous Gorgon from various methodological and fictional perspectives. Marie's own enga... [more]
|
Who/ What/ Where/ How?
by Ana Finel Honigman
Linda McCue at elly brose-eiermann - berlin
May 2nd, 2009 - June 20th, 2009
Posted
6/7/09
Linda McCue's surreal large-scale oil or pencil-and-watercolour-on-paper paintings resemble leaves from a graphic novel, though her narratives remain compellingly mysterious. The forty-five-year-old Canadian artist's uncanny images are especially disquieting because of her technical precision. For example, in "The Flimsy Disguise (III)," a person sits at a large table holding to their face a sheet of plain paper with basic facial features drawn in. Other sheets of paper are scatte... [more]
|
Jolie-Laide
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
6/5/09
As New York´s ´Model as Muse´ exhibition at the Met reminds us, the inspirational power of beautiful women is bewitching. However, Berlin-born-and-based designer Fay Smith has found her inspiration for her Fay Alice line instead in the homages artist Joseph Cornell made to the grand beauties of his age. Trained as a tailor in London after attending a technically rigorous but creatively underwhelming fashion school in Berlin, Alice came under the spell of the autodidact Ameri... [more]
|
Watching the grass grow
by Ana Finel Honigman
Stefan Burger, Tillman Kaiser, Didier Rittener, Tilo Schulz, Nadim Vardag at Galerie Jette Rudolph
May 1st, 2009 - June 13th, 2009
Posted
5/24/09
"Conceptious" brings together five artists creating understated conceptual works addressing diverse ways of understanding the passage of time. In keeping with this sombre theme almost all the works are nearly monochromatic with one instance of blue ink on white paper and a few sightings of subtle colour. Yet, they demonstrate a spectrum of attitudes and approaches.
Stefan Burger, from Mühlheim, made wallpaper for one wall in the gallery from twin photographs of wood sign-posts surrounded by blackn... [more]
|
Giving us what we want
by Ana Finel Honigman
Andreas Golder at Arndt
May 2nd, 2009 - June 26th, 2009
Posted
5/23/09
The large-scale mixed-media expressionistic paintings and sculptures in Andreas Golder's "da steckt ganz viel dahinter" ("There is a lot behind") owe obvious debts to Francis Bacon and Hieronymus Bosch, but the exhibition's spirit comes from The Rolling Stones. The burning question that crystallizes the intense energy in the Russia-born and Berlin-based artist's gothic paintings is Jagger's own challenge: " If I could stick a knife in my heart/ Suicide right on stage/ Would it be enough f... [more]
|
Thinking inside the Box
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
5/19/09
BOB - Box off Berlin
Zimmerstr. 11, am Checkpoint Charlie, 10969 Berlin
www.boxoffberlin.de
Everyone hip hates tourist traps. Especially people visiting a new location who want something representative of their stay to take home.
So, where can an "anti-tourist" visitor to Europe's captial of cool buy collectables reflecting both the coolness of the city and his or her own coolness?
For visitors to Berlin, Box off Berlin (or BOB) solves this conundrum. A few steps away from the typica... [more]
|
The real loveliness of José de León's surrealism
by Ana Finel Honigman
José de León at Lucas Carrieri Art Gallery
April 24th, 2009 - June 13th, 2009
Posted
5/10/09
José de León’s luscious, dreamy paintings enhance the unconventionally angled grey walls of Lucas Carrieri’s charming storefront space. The mature Spanish artist's large canvases contain dense clusters of human and animal forms in jewel-like colours. Birds burst open-mouthed like ripe berries on a bush. Images of lit candles add warmth and delight to scenes of evergreens and creatures. Full of energy and drama, de León’s compositions have a Chagall-like palette and vibr... [more]
|
Why else is it called Weinbergspark......
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
5/8/09
Die Weinerei
Veteranenstraße 14, 10119 BerlinMo-Fr 13 Uhr - 20 Uhr, Sa 11 Uhr - 20 Uhr Tel / Fax 030 4406983
My friends and I refer to this spot on Weinbergspark as "the free place" though its official name is Weinerei. Before moving to Berlin, I heard dreamy tales of a bar where you drank as much as you like and paid whatever you thought was right. But no one mentioned that the place also has vats of yummy, home cooked food, cushy couches and the most friendly atmosphere around. All... [more]
|
Bounding around Berlin for Gallery Weekend
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
5/5/09
Jessica Backus and John Kleckner at Peres Projects
Evol installing at Wilde Galerie
Evol's "Wallflower, multiple choice" (2009) spray-paint on cardboard at Wilde Galerie
Opening show for Moeller Fine Arts
Feinkost Galerie's director Aaron Moulton and artist David Levine at Kunst-Werke
Wolfgang Breuer at KW Berlin
Musician Maya Kishi-Anderson at KW
Annette Kelm at KW
Tape Modern Berlin
Artist Hannes Bend with Associate Director of Yvon Lambert, Anna Erickso... [more]
|
Crossing Cultures
by Ana Finel Honigman
Wael Shawky at Gentili Apri
April 30th, 2009 - June 15th, 2009
Posted
5/4/09
Shoppers browsing in the drab Amsterdam supermarket where artist Wael Shawky is filming "The Cave: Amsterdam" (2006) glance, with varying degrees of interest, at the young Egyptian artist dressed in a blazer and white shirt who recites an uninterrupted stream of Arabic into the camera. With deadpan delivery, he appears to be presenting a low-budget news report as he drifts through aisles where shoppers of all ages and ethnicities are doing their errands. But unbeknownst to them, Shawky is... [more]
|
Debating Photorealism with David Nicholson
by Ana Finel Honigman
Robert Bechtle, Charles Bell, Tom Blackwell, Chuck Close, Robert Cottingham, Don Eddy, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Ralph Goings, Ron Kleeman, Richard McLean, Malcolm Morley, John Salt, Ben Schonzeit at Deutsche Guggenheim
March 7th, 2009 - May 10th, 2009
Posted
4/28/09
David Nicholson and I discuss "Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s" over dinner at Berlin's Cafe Fleury.
Ana Finel Honigman: We’ve been talking almost every day about the Photorealist show since I saw it last week. Yet it always feels to me like we’re talking about two totally different shows. Instead of just reviewing it for ArtSlant, I thought it would be more interesting to tape our conversation and see what we’re actually saying to each other. David Nicholson: What ar... [more]
|
The Dirt on the Bomb
by Ana Finel Honigman
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle at Galerie Thomas Schulte
April 25th, 2009 - June 20th, 2009
Posted
4/26/09
“Dirty Bomb” by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle is a massive, gleaming white aluminium and fibreglass sculpture in the shape of the Fat Man plutonium bomb designed for use during World War II. At the Galerie Thomas Schulte, this frightful form is suspended above the ground and literally smattered with mud. The mud is splashed over the bomb’s tip, as if the mess had occurred when the bomb was blazing through the air but hideously close to the earth. Or, as if its pristine form were just a p... [more]
|
Berlin's Neon-Bright Young Things
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
4/24/09
Selecting "Welcome to the Jungle" as the soundtrack for the ninth Berlin Fashion week runway show of homebrew intellectual cool by C.Neeon was an ill-advised decision - unless designers Doreen Schulz and Clara Leskovar intended to underscore the obvious links between their vibrantly hued, layered constructions and origami birds of paradise. Those shapes and their wealth of colour were typical of the signature style that the two young mothers have been cooking up... [more]
|
curb your enthusiasm
by Ana Finel Honigman
Diann Bauer at DNA
March 1st, 2009 - May 3rd, 2009
Posted
4/19/09
On the surface, “let us pray from those now residing in THE DESIGNATED AREA (I),” Diann Bauer’s show produced with fellow artists Amanda Beech and Roman Vasseur seems to be just a demonstration of an ideologically amped-up adolescent’s earnest intensity. However, underneath the work’s slogans, the familiar images of protest and “progressive thinking,” is a powerful mature caution about the potential for hollowness, banality and fragility within such extreme emotion.
Combi... [more]
|
Roger!
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
4/18/09
do you read me?!
Magazine und Lektüre der Gegenwart Auguststraße 28 (Ecke Große Hamburger Str.) 10117 Berlin-Mitte
I often lament not having pursued a lucrative career, as if I had a choice about whether or not to become a magazine writer. However my mother thinks differently. She didn’t understand it at the time but when I was a child, she could plant me in front of any glossy and I’d be endlessly delighted. Whenever I was late coming home from school, she could find me at the... [more]
|
Kenno Apatrida's Exhumation
by Ana Finel Honigman
Kenno Apatrida at WILDE Gallery
March 27th, 2009 - April 25th, 2009
Posted
4/12/09
Kenno Apatrida’s “EXHUMATION” fills the Wilde Galerie’s elegant white storefront space with dolls, puppets, phonographs, antique ceramic tiles, tear-outs from political magazines and other propaganda from the Third Reich, old stamps, vintage family photographs, warped canvases clotted with paint, clusters of framed paintings, devotional icons and burning candles dripping red and cream-colored wax. Yet the effect is restrained compared to the overflowing installations the Peruvian a... [more]
|
Investments in Luxury
by Ana Finel Honigman
Mun-gi Yang at PARKRYUSOOK GALLERY
April 1st, 2009 - April 13th, 2009
Posted
4/7/09
Artists in Korea often lament affluent youngsters' zeal to "invest" in luxury brand items instead of giving tangible support for art. In his first solo show in Seoul, Mun-gi Yang playfully derides the value high-end accessories accrue by showing stones cut into vague purse-shaped sculptures carved with Chanel and Luis Vuitton labels. Some sculptures are placed on plinths, like objects of desire to covet in shops' display cases. Others are arranged in clusters on floor of Seoul's prestigio... [more]
|
Get these blues
by Ana Finel Honigman
at The Columns
February 17th, 2009 - April 25th, 2009
Posted
3/31/09
Dong Jo Chang, the director of The Columns gallery in Seoul, is something of Korea's answer to Larry Gorgonian. His roster spans such stellar American and European artists as Tom Wesselmann and Michael Craig-Martin, and Korea's top names including Kwang Young Chun. Dong Jo Chang's personal collection, which is often on view alongside work by the gallery's artists, features significant works by Warhol, Hirst, Calder, Jim Dine and Niki de Saint Phalie. Many of these prized pieces are... [more]
|
All things chic at 10 Corso Como
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
3/29/09
10 Corso Como
Cheongdam-dong, Seoul, Korea
In a culture that encourages traditional femininity, many Korean women sublimate suppressed energies into their sartorial style. While Seoul's chic youth sport a sleek black, stiletto-sharp uniform for a look of international elan, their mothers and more mainstream sisters still reach for frills and exuberant prints. The best examples of the entire black-to-pastel-print style spectrum can be found in the Seoul branch of 10 Corso Como. Like t... [more]
|
Reciprocated Love
by Ana Finel Honigman
Celia Baker, Daniel Baker, Christian Capurro, Goekhan Erdogan, Bob Flanagan, Dorothy Iannone, Mike Kelley, Cristiano Mangione, JORGE PERIS, Sarah Pucci, Sheree Rose at FEINKOST
February 28th, 2009 - April 19th, 2009
Posted
3/22/09
Andy Warhol's dictum that "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art," is often cited as a paradigm-changing contribution to contemporary art. In today's economy, however, artists need to re-evaluate those values and find other ways to gauge the cost-benefits of creative endeavors.
One such approach is offered by the moving and thought-provoking group show "More Love Hours That Can Ever Be Repaid," curated by Aaron Moulton at the Feinkost gallery.... [more]
|
Cleaning up
by Ana Finel Honigman
Eemil Karila at Program e.V.
March 5th, 2009 - April 11th, 2009
Posted
3/21/09
While creating “Surface Values” Eemil Karila learned that the cleaning lady with whom he was collaborating on the project had previously been a nurse in the Ukraine. She did not want her name to be listed in the show’s press material because she did not want her current occupation to be revealed to her family at home. But her marks on the gallery’s floor are what transform the space from an empty dark room into a haunting work of art.
For his first solo show in Berlin, th... [more]
|
The Best of East and West
by Ana Finel Honigman
Posted
3/18/09
Mongrels in Common
Auguststrasse 5a10117 Berlinwww.mongrelsincommon.comTel. +49(0) 30 28 09 59 97
International tastemakers cite Berlin as a source of inspiration for down-to-earth cool. Yet one of the city’s most promising home-grown fashion labels has found their muse is Dubai’s gleaming gaudy skyline. For the Berlin-based design team Mongrels in Common, Dubai’s unconditional adoration of all-things shiny and pricey provides an inspiring counterpoint to their own signature earthy elegan... [more]
|
indigestable
by Ana Finel Honigman
Angela Mewes at Nice & Fit
February 27th, 2009 - March 28th, 2009
Posted
3/16/09
Paradoxically, the weakness in "When the picture left me it was already too late and other new works," Angela Mewes's solo show at Nice & Fit gallery, demonstrates the strength of Berlin's nurturing art scene. The exhibition's text tells how the twenty-eight year old Berlin-educated artist inundated the gallery with images, material and thoughts - a tactic that usually turns dealers away from overly ambitious artists. In most cities, major art dealers won't consider an unknown ar... [more]
|
|
|
|
|
|
add to mylist
report abuse
contact us for help