At 10am we had a breakfast meeting with artist Nikola Irmer in her studio in the newly regenerated Prenzlauerberg area. She told us about her interest in people on the periphery of society and showed us her series of paintings which depict intimate images of a drag queen, Horst, and her more recent paintings of young teenagers.
Just a short walk away was Knut Eckstein’s studio, an artist who has recently returned to Berlin after living in New York for a few years. He showed us his sculptures made from ‘urban traces’ such as empty plastic bottles, hazard tape and other street debris. He has a forthcoming show at Klara Wallner Gallery in Berlin.
After lunch we met with the co directors and founders of Wooloo, Sixten Kai Nielsen and Martin Rosengaard. Wooloo, being an Aboriginal term for ‘where waters meet. They have shown extensively in South Africa, New York, Germany and Denmark and spoke to us about some of their previous projects, a socially engaged project AsylumHome and their ‘Life Exchange’ project. They also spoke to us about their New Life Berlin Festival which was due to launch the next day and would feature mainly performative based work selected through an online open call for submissions.
After a few hours to meander the galleries around the Augustsraße area we met Maurice Carlin (who was leading the Islington Mill Art Academy residency at Westgermany Gallery) for a quick coffee at KW. Berlin based artist Ingo Gerken who was also there then took us to Gitte Weise Gallery where his solo show currently was. He then took us to a monthly artists dinner hosted by Uwe Jonas of Neues Problem where we ate pasta, spinach and pumpkin with mint infused oil.
Gallerie Neue Problem
The final stop for the day was at the Neue Nationalgalerie, the third Biennial venue which is open late on Thursdays. The Neue Nationalgalerie was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1968 and is constructed of mainly of glass resulting in a free flowing space linking the exterior wasteland area to the deliberately challenging interior gallery.
4 comments:
Day Three was lovely for me as it was a chance to see Nikola, so perhaps I offer a bias opinion. But I found it interesting to hear Nikola speak in such a context: in front of so many curators...
Paul
I found the visiting Nikola Irmer in her studio interesting not only for her work but also to hear how the group discussed her work in terms of its social implications and the characters involved in her portraits. It made me more aware of the differing approaches curators may have to an artist’s practice. This may have been more evident as Nikola’s practice is fundamentally one of traditional painting. As a painter myself my interest in her was in the physical act of painting, paint and how painting sits with other art forms… boring to some maybe… but hey… what can I say.
The meeting with Wooloo was a highlight of the trip on reflection for me. Not only because it was a nice place to meet them… sitting outside a ram shackled building in Mitte on a sunny summer day, but because of the energy they emitted and the feeling that anything was possible. Without sounding too gushing I’d go as far as to say that it was inspirational. That was a bit gushing wasn’t it, but I guess they simply gave me the feeling that I could go away and organise anything I put my mind to.
Neue Nationalgalerie I felt was the opposite of what Wooloo had talked about and the informal space at Neues Problem (the type of space I’d like to emulate) that we had visited in the afternoon. It was a stonking big institutional space and although there were interesting links between the permanent collection downstairs and the Biennial show it didn’t do a lot for me. Maybe it felt staid.
Our first 2 meetings of the day with Nikola Irmer and Knut Eckstein were the most insightful so far. They offered what i had expected Lise Nelleman from SparwasserHQ to have provided the day before - a gritty and textured insight into what it meant to work as an artist in Berlin. Whereas i felt Lise offered a slightly tainted view, perhaps an un-necessarily negative one, Both Nikola and Knut openly discussed their inspirations drawn from working in Berlin. From Nikola's friendship with Horst, the transvestite she has been painting for the last few years, and the youth's in inner city parks that she now captures, and Knut's sculptural pieces,constructed from crates and boxes of the same brand collected over time. Both artists kindly let the 11 of us cram into their studios, and patiently answered our endless questions.
I have to disagree with James's opinions above about Woolooo though now i'm afraid. I do agree with him that they made the impossible seem possible, but from the perspective of coddled trustafarians with money in their pockets to make the impossible possible. I did like some of their projects, but thought they themselves perhaps didn't understand the potential depths and requirements of the social and political approaches they had taken - being from white mainland europe an all that. I felt they glossed the projects over with theoretical jargon, making them sound impressive on paper, yet i consider several to be fundamentally flawed in their approach and process. But they were trying, and i give them that.
Visiting Nicola Irmer’s studio felt like the culmination of a cut-short conversation begun at her show Horst at Apartment Gallery back during that Manchester January. I remember feeling fascinated with the experience of viewing these large-scale portraits of the 18 stone drag queen Horst posing and dressing up, while crammed into an unknown persons bed or sitting room, surrounded by their clothes and personal objects, not to mention the throngs of people. The experience was slightly uncomfortable and it made me wonder about the personalities of the artist, the gregarious model and the brave people at Apartment who opened their flat to the public. I found it fascinating to hear, on visiting Irmer’s studio, how central to many of the works (we also were made privy to a series of intimate paintings of a pair of teenage boys over the course of their on/off friendship) these complex relationships inevitably became. I went to the loo and was pleased to spot a shelf of heavy tomes by big players such as Manet and Velazquez which I felt lent another layer of interest to the work.
The afternoon was spent in glorious weather in relaxed conversation with the aspirational Wooloo boys on the pavement outside the hive of activity that was their base. Paul documented the meeting with earnest.
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