Feb. 1, 2024
Every month, Berlin Art Link shines a spotlight on international exhibitions and events with our Worldwide Hit List. We want to highlight artists, galleries, museums and new projects touching on a variety of topics, employing multiple media and featuring diverse subjects. Below are some of the stand-outs that we’ve selected for the month of February.
Kunsthalle Basel
Klára Hosnedlová: ‘Growth’
Exhibition: Feb. 9–May 20, 2024
kunsthallebasel.ch
Steinenberg 7, 4051 Basel, Switzerland, click here for map
The upcoming exhibition of Klára Hosnedlová at Kunsthalle Basel, titled ‘Growth,’ explores the legacies of socialist modernism and traditions of Central-Eastern-European collective mythologies through craftmanship and a retro-futuristic aesthetic. In her first solo show in Switzerland, Hosendlová’s surreal sculptures were inspired by the narrative sequences of brutalist architecture and hauntological landscape-building strategies. The cast glass pieces are surrounded by the images of her non-public performances, which she photographs and then transforms into elaborately embroidered representations. Creating a landscape of intimacy and nostalgia, Hosnedlová’s work redefines the connection of past and future from the present and inspires sensations of liminality.
Klára Hosnedlová: ‘Nest,’ 2020, exhibition view, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin // Photo by Def Image, courtesy the artist, hunt kastner, Prague; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; and White Cube, London
kurimanzutto
Gabriel Orozco: ‘Circular Identity’
Exhibition: Feb. 10–Mar. 23, 2024
kurimanzutto.com
C. Gobernador Rafael Rebollar 94, San Miguel Chapultepec I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11850 Mexico City, Mexico, click here for map
Gabriel Orozco began his series ‘Diario de Plantas’ in Tokyo during the pandemic, documenting different leaves that caught his attention or fell at his feet. The small, notebook-sized drawings elucidate his daily practice and his interest in the landscape and natural environment. In his upcoming show at kurimanzutto in Mexico City, opening during the Zona Maco 2024 art fair, the Mexican artist picks up on themes around the cycle of life and nature. Shown alongside the drawings are a series of sculptures—made in Mexico and carved from local stones such as red volcanic tezontle and white marble—and paintings, articulating the encounter of two figures, both produced around the 15th century: Leonardo Da Vinci’s ink notebook drawing, ‘Vitruvian Man,’ and the monumental stone sculpture of Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess of life and death.
Gabriel Orozco: ‘Untitled,’ 2021-2022 // Courtesy of the artist and Gabriel Orozco
ICA London
Aria Dean: ‘Abattoir’
Exhibition: Feb. 8–May 5, 2024
ica.art
The Mall, St. James’s, London SW1Y 5AH, UK, click here for map
The exhibition ‘Abattoir’ by Aria Dean is the New York-based artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK. The site-specific video installation ‘Abbatoir, U.S.A.!’—commissioned by the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago—in the main gallery space of ICA invites visitors to explore the relationship between spaces of modern architecture and death. The exhibition offers a critical overview of the functions of cinema and systematic violence and puts them in conversation with histories of industrialization, fascism and colonialism. The video work shows the interior of an empty slaughterhouse as an analogy for structuralized death—while the soundscape of the film combines generated sound and the echoes of noise traveling between physical and virtual spaces. Deconstructing different meanings of representation in structural film emphasizes showing real events, and the material nature of the often hidden documenting processes.
Aria Dean: ‘Abattoir, U.S.A.!,’ 2023, single-channel video, sound, colour, 10 min. 50 sec. // C ourtesy the artist, Greene Naftali, New York and Château Shatto, Los Angeles
WIELS
Oscar Murillo: ‘Masses’
Exhibition: Feb. 2–Apr. 28, 2024
wiels.org
Av. Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Brussels, Belgium, click here for map
Oscar Murillo’s solo exhibition at WIELS establishes a cartography of mass—liquid, materia, sonic—across a large-scale installation that opens with a panorama of expansive gestural paintings. It marks the end of his long-term project ‘Frequencies,’ through which raw canvases were sent to schools worldwide for children to draw on them for six months before returning them to the artist. The exhibition signals a new phase of the project, transforming the collected canvases into raw material mass to be used for the production of new works. Through the splicing of objects from different places and contexts, Murillo obliterates the weight of time and geography, allowing a polyphonic stream of consciousness. The exhibition also includes mass-produced plastic garden chairs, rock-like sculpture formations, a series of ‘Flight’ drawings and a film shot on New Year’s Eve in Colombia. They similarly reflect Murillo’s preoccupation with late-capitalist exchange of people and goods, which includes questions about class, systems of production and labor.
Oscar Murillo: ‘disrupted frequencies (Nepal, Ghana, China, United States, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Egypt),’ 2013-2023 // Photo by Tim Bowditch and Reinis Lismanis; courtesy the artist; copyright © Oscar Murillo
Tate Modern
‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’
Exhibition: Feb. 15–Sep. 1, 2024
tate.org.uk
Bankside, London SE1 9TG, UK, click here for map
Spanning seven decades of Yoko Ono’s multidisciplinary practice from the mid-1950s to now, the exhibition at Tate Modern highlights key moments in the career of the artist renowned for her activism, work for world peace and environmental campaigns. A leading figure in conceptual and performance art, experimental film and music, Ono developed her practice in America, Japan and UK, centering ideas and expressing them in poetic, humorous and radical ways. ‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’ traces the development of her innovative work and presents some of her most talked about artworks and performances, including ‘Cut Piece’ (1964) and ‘Film No.4 (Bottoms)’ (1966-67), as well as a selection of her activist projects such as PEACE is POWER and ‘Wish Tree.’ Conceived in close collaboration with Ono’s studio, the exhibition will bring a total of over 200 works including instruction pieces and scores, installations, films, music and photography, revealing a radical approach to language, art and participation.
Yoko Ono: ‘Freedom,’ 1970 // Courtesy the artist
Deichtorhallen Hamburg
Claudia Andujar: ‘The End of the World’
Exhibition: Feb. 9–Aug. 11, 2024
deichtorhallen.de
PHOXXI, Deichtorstraße 1-2, 20095 Hamburg, Germany, click here for map
For Claudia Andujar, photography is an artistic and political tool. Her body of work testifies to her longstanding commitment to the protection of the Yanomami, one of the largest indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon. The Swiss-born photographer decided to pursue a career as a photojournalist in Brazil after fleeing the Nazis, where she became involved in the fight against dictatorship and violence, both as an artist and a rights advocate. Since the early 1970s, she has taken over 60,000 photographs documenting the daily life of the Yanomami as well as the conflicts they faced due to mining, land disputes and diseases. Many indigenous activists refer to Andujar’s impactful work over the past decades, as her efforts helped draw international attention to the threats they face. A selection of her most important groups of works will be presented at Deichtorhallen Hamburg’s temporary exhibition venue PHOXXI, in a solo exhibition curated by Victor Hois.
Claudia Andujar: ‘Floresta amazônica, Pará – da série Sonhos Yanomami’ [Amazon Forest, Pará from Yanomami Dream series], 2002 // Copyright: © Claudia Andujar; courtesy Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo
Lagos Biennial 2024
Exhibition: Feb. 3–10, 2024
lagos-biennial.org
Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos Island, Lagos 102273, Nigeria, click here for map
The 2024 edition of the Lagos Biennial marks a shift towards experiments in non-conventional modes of exhibition-making and opens a speculative space for the fabrication of alternate realities. Under the theme of ‘Refuge,’ it offers an opportunity to reassess the promises, disappointments and ongoing ramifications of the nation-state model with its modes of governance under the auspices of global capital. It also reflects critically on the historical site of the exhibition, Tafawa Balewa Square, which is linked to its entertainment purpose in the colonial period as well as to political, cultural and commercial events after Nigeria’s Independence. The program looks at the possible meanings of this site concerning political allegiance, territory, sovereignty, regionality, notions of belonging, encounter and alliance. The featured artists explore how to create an operative notion of refuge that can offer alternate paths towards constructing renewable communities and work towards ecological justice in this moment of entangled systemic crises.
Lagos Biennial II, exhibition view, Lagos, Nigeria, 2019 // Courtesy Lagos Biennial
Desert X AlUla 2024
Exhibition: Feb. 9–Mar. 23, 2024
desertx.org
AlUla, Saudi Arabia, click here for map
Under the title ‘In the Presence Of Absence,’ the third edition of Desert X AlUla features artists who explore ideas of the unseen and the inexpressible.This site-responsive, open-air exhibition of works by Saudi and international contemporary artists takes place across AlUla, an ancient desert region in the Arabian Peninsula, drawing on principles of land art and inviting visitors to experience spectacular landscapes while journeying between the works. Encouraged to engage with what is not immediately apparent, artists will stage new encounters with the landscape, imagining alternative perspectives that appreciate the imperceptible forces and atmospheres of time, wind, light, the flows of history and myths woven into the place. Desert X AlUla is a highlight of the AlUla Arts Festival, which runs from February 9th to March 2nd, 2024. Raneem Farsi and Neville Wakefield will return as this year’s artistic directors and the exhibition will be curated by Maya El Khalil and Marcello Dantas.
Jim Denevan: ‘Angle of Repose,’ installation view, Desert X AlUla 2022 // Courtesy the artist and Desert X AlUla; photo by Lance Gerber
Museo Anahuacalli
Wyatt Kahn: ‘Fantasmas (Ghosts)’
Exhibition: Feb. 6–May 9, 2024
museoanahuacalli.org
Museo 150, San Pablo Tepetlapa, Coyoacán, 04620 Mexico City, Mexico click here for map
Wyatt Kahn’s solo exhibition ‘Fantasmas’ at the Anahuacalli Museum is part of Mexico City Art Week. The installed works experiment with the relationship between painting and sculpture, the abstract and the figurative and engage in dialogue with objects from the Anahuacalli’s permanent collection—pieces of Mesoamerican art bequeathed to Mexico by Diego Rivera. The exhibition offers a closer relationship between the viewer and the pieces: everyday elements used by Kahn are given new meaning, elevated from the position of objects to subjects and potential bodies. Although his works may seem abstract, they are all references for the everyday observations of the artist’s life.
Wyatt Kahn: ‘Parade,’ 2021 // Courtesy the artist, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / Vienna, Xavier, Hufkens, Brussels, and Galería Mascota, Mexico City, © the artist
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Group Show: ‘Poetics of Encryption’
Exhibition: Feb. 17–May 26, 2024
kw-berlin.de
Auguststraße 69, 10117 Berlin, click here for map
This extensive group exhibition at KW builds on the recently published book by curator Nadim Samman, titled ‘Poetics of Encryption: Art and the Technocene.’ Considering widespread digital tools and their often overlooked inner-workings, the show’s participants will take a deeper look at our lack of power in the face of inscrutable technological systems. Spanning analogue and digital media, ‘Poetics of Encryption’ features both historic and newly-commissioned work by more than 40 international artists, including Simon Denny, Rindon Johnson and Rachel Rossin, among many others.
Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion: ‘IDLE,’ 2023 // Courtesy of the artists and KW Institute
