032c Selects: Berlin Gallery Weekend 2022

April 29, 2022|Cassidy George

Installation view: Sterling Ruby, IN WARM SHROUD. KISSING THE BLOOM CRUX. A FROST WINDOW., Sprüth Magers, Berlin, 2022. Photo: Timo Ohler and Ingo Kniest

Weekends in Berlin are often overwhelming. Whether you're agonizing over which clubs to hit and DJ sets to catch, or frantically planning your last-minute art tour during Berlin Gallery Weekend – which runs from April 29 to May 1 this year – the options feel endless. Strategizing can be exhausting and research can be tedious, but fear not. 032c is here to help (with the art, not the partying). We've assembled a list of shows that we are most looking forward to seeing in Berlin this weekend, so that you can close your 100 open search tabs in Safari. Our recommendations also include galleries and institutions that are not *official* participants in BGW this year. But if you're in the mood to see some art, why not see the best?

Sprüth Magers

In Sterling Ruby's solo show, "IN WARM SHROUD. KISSING THE BLOOM CRUX. A FROST WINDOW." the artist presents several new bodies of work installed throughout Sprüth Magers that interrelate themes of verticality, duality, craft, domesticity, and shifts in scale. The show also premieres a series of monumental, wall-based works that speak to Ruby's longtime engagement with textiles and assemblage. In the upstairs gallery, a selection of Ruby’s ceramic FLOWERS and REIF sculptures explore varying geometries, opening, collapsing, and reconstituting anew.

Oranienburger Str. 18, 10178 Berlin

Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler

The figurative painter Pieter Schoolwerth’s latest series, "Rigged" – which is currently on view at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler – considers how we see ourselves in an age of hyper-mediation, in which subjectivity is a constant visual exercise in construction and manipulation. In the show, Schoolwerth experiments with the effects of abstraction on the human form, animating his characters in a jelly-like manner that subverts the skeleton's hinge system.

Kohlfurter Str. 41/43, 10999 Berlin

Peres Projects

Two years ago, artist Shuang Li traveled from China to Berlin for her first opening at Peres Projects, "I Want to Sleep More but by Your Side." Since then, she has not been able to return home to China due to Covid-19 restrictions. Her second show, "Nobody's Home," explores the ramifications of a two-year period of restlessness and dislocation in a series of videos, sculptures, and wall works.

Karl-Marx-Allee 82, 10243 Berlin

Galerie Neu

"Die bunten Tage" is Louis Fratino’s first solo exhibition with Galerie Neu. The New York based artist will be presenting new paintings which meditate on color's capacity to inform the emotional register of the everyday. In his paintings and sculptures, Fratino draws heavily on American and European Modernism, book illustration, and antiquity. By examining the close details of daily life, Fratino posits the immediate as a source of discovery.

Linienstraße 119, 10115 Berlin

Haus am Waldsee

Those willing to travel a bit outside of the city center should visit Haus am Waldsee, which is hosting the first institutional solo exhibition of the internationally renowned, award-winning industrial designer, Konstantin Grcic, in Berlin. Grcic develops what he calls "New Normals" by combining his own creations with everyday objects. While these marriages of design reflect upon the present condition, they also explore the multitudinous possibilities of the future – utopian as well as dystopian.

Argentinische Allee 30, 14163 Berlin

KW Institute for Contemporary Art

The BLESS N°72 Saunarider, created in collaboration with Sam Chermayeff, is one of many installations that will be activated over the course of BLESS' year-long residency at KW. The duo behind BLESS, Ines Kaag and Desiree Heiss, have been creating transdisciplinary projects since 1997. As a health-preserving measure in these strenuous times, the situation designers have created the Saunarider: a mobile sauna in a 90s Mercedes-Benz outfitted with a wooden bead interior. Interested parties can reserve a 30-minute sauna session online.

Auguststraße 69, 10117 Berlin

Michel Majerus Estate

20 years after the death of Michel Majerus, the national exhibition series "Michel Majerus 2022" is dedicated to various phases and aspects of the artist’s oeuvre. In "kosuth majerus sonderborg – an installation by Joseph Kosuth," Majerus' works are showcased alongside those of his two professors, tracing an artistic connection that spans generations. In the works, competing notions of concept and text versus gesture and spontaneity become one, drawing parallels to the world of video games.

Knaackstrasse 12, 10405 Berlin.

Galerie Max Hetzler

New work by Thomas Struth is on view at two Max Hetzler gallery spaces. The works exhibited at Bleibtreustraße 45 include photographs taken at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Struth’s interest in CERN lies in the philosophical questions, the political dimensions, and the pictorial possibilities offered by advanced technology. In the second gallery space across the street, which is visible through a wide shop window, Struth displays new "Family Portraits" – a subject which he has been returning to since 1985.

Bleibtreustraße 45 & 15/16, 10623 Berlin