by Mia Butter // May 5, 2025
The May Day energy buzzing through the city has perhaps died down for most, unless, of course, you participate in Berlin’s annual Gallery Weekend. The sunny weather has jumped ship for now, and I huddle into a steamy bus full of tourists as the rain pours on my plans to cycle this weekend. Finally off the bus, I walk past a lineup of taxis outside Gropius Bau, filled with other visitors on their way to witness Peaches perform Yoko Ono’s famed ‘Cut Piece’ in the atrium of the building. The activation occurs amidst Ono’s solo exhibition ‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,’ as we stand under a banner hanging from the ceiling that reads “PEACE IS POWER” in bold black letters. A potent and political sparkplug to the weekend, Peaches’ rendition of ‘Cut Piece’ ignites its own ecosystem, like a terrarium within the walls of the atrium, reflecting our society and the issues we couldn’t leave outside.
Peaches: ‘Cut Piece,’ 2025, performance at Gropius Bau // Photo by Holger Talinski
The next morning, the sun decides to join us half-heartedly, enough for me to cycle to the border of Mitte and Friedrichshain, where champagne and pastries are served alongside Monica Bonvicini’s works at Capitain Petzel. ‘It is Night Outside’ presents sculptures, works on paper and a film that shares its title with the exhibition, spanning the mezzanine, main floor and basement. The film—a site-specific, two-channel video installed in the basement of the gallery, behind a curtain—follows the protagonists as they rearrange the furniture in a white room, shoving desks, beds and sofas around to create new spaces. The screeching sounds of furniture scraping the floor fill the room. Several of the other works on view make their debut in the show, such as Bonvicini’s series on paper ‘Bitch,’ ‘Vamp (light)’ and ‘Vamp (pink)’ alongside glass coat hooks delicately holding women’s underwear. Sculptures made of leather belts and powder-coated steel in her ‘Outing Texture’ series are more familiar examples of Bonvicini’s interest in the interplay between gender, power dynamics and architecture.
Monica Bonvicini: ‘It is Night Outside,’ 2025, installation view at Capitain Petzel, Berlin // Courtesy the artist and Capitain Petzel, Berlin, photo by Andrea Rossetti
Down Karl-Marx-Allee and deeper into Mitte, I stop by BQ to see ‘The Brotherhood of New Blockheads,’ named after a virtually unknown group of performance artists from St. Petersburg. Active from the late 90s into the early 2000s, The Brotherhood of New Blockheads staged over 100 performances after the fall of the Soviet Union, in an environment with other priorities than the absurd and expressive work they created. Curated by former Kunsthalle Zurich director, Daniel Baumann, the show presents around 25 pieces to a German audience for the first time. Walking through the maze of works, through tight corridors and the building’s stairwell, a transformed apartment space houses another exhibition of the gallery’s represented artists, including Raphaela Vogel’s recent sculpture ‘Kokett’ alongside Alexandra Bircken’s ‘Glitch,’ among other works. After a cacophony of textures and refreshing change of pace, I continue on to neugerriemschneider.
‘The Brotherhood of New Blockheads,’ 2025, installation view at BQ // Courtesy of the artists and BQ
The reality of Gallery Weekend sets in as I make my way into the courtyard, to the back of the line that has formed outside the Linienstraße gallery. In conversation and mild confusion, we all wait to be called up in pairs to enter neugerriemschneider’s new show ‘adjective motion, nebulous currents,’ featuring the works of Isa Genzken, Ai Weiwei and Tobias Rehberger, among others. It’s tight quarters, and between Mario García Torres’ ‘When Stillness Produces Beautiful Moments’ and Isa Genzken’s ‘Wolfgang’ lies about a meter of space to carefully move past Ai Weiwei’s ‘Nord Stream’ Lego painting into the next room. Tobias Rehberger’s mural fills the largest wall in the smallest room, alongside works by Louise Lawler and Simon Starling. I slip out of the exhibition space, only to be met by an even longer line than the one I joined earlier, and pass through the crowd to the second exhibition space. ‘bewegung im stillstand’ is Thomas Bayrle’s fourth solo show with the gallery, presenting a new body of work alongside pieces from the 1980s and 90s. His recent series ‘Pianta Robusta’ (I through VIII) and ‘Frutta Robusta II’ repeat the same image of shopping mall escalators, distorted and reshaped to create floral still lifes, not completely different in approach to his 1985 work ‘A Rose is a Rose,’ hung in the next room. As I exit the courtyard, I leave Linienstraße for Leipzigerstraße, on to Klemm’s for Leelee Chan’s ‘Spiral Diaries.’
‘advective motion, nebulous currents,’ 2025, installation view // © neugerriemschneider, courtesy the artists and neugerriemschneider, Berlin, photo by Jens Ziehe, Berlin
The afternoon creeps up on me. I have worn my gallery-hopping companion out and am on my own now. As I arrive at Klemm’s relatively new space (they moved in a year ago on the occasion of Gallery Weekend 2024), I follow the sound of chatter up the stairs. The space is filled with a tour group, and they huddle from the entrance towards the exhibition room. Inside there are five works by Hong Kong-based artist Leelee Chan, all materially unique and yet conceptually cohesive. Chan explores the geological, the cultural and the material in an exciting way, almost infecting the viewer with her obsession. Below the gallery space on ground level, there is a secondary space that was temporarily converted into Chan’s makeshift studio. The walls are carefully plastered with printed images from the internet, some screenshots and some studies. The desk is strewn with books and shells, as well as other natural artifacts, with the spirals and coils that inform the works in the show, and it feels like we are catching a glimpse into Chan’s process.
Leelee Chan: ‘Peculiar Pyramid,’ 2024, Tang Dynasty ( 618-907) pottery horse and and earth spirit fragments, found aluminium components, stainless steel mirror, pigment, epoxy clay, 6 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 8 1/4 in // Copyright the artist, courtesy of the artist and Matthew Brown gallery, photo by Paul Salveson
While Mitte does have some of Berlin’s most well-known galleries, it only represents a sliver of what the city has to offer, not to mention the contemporary art spaces that fall outside the gallery system. That being said, there were some undeniable highlights, from smaller and larger spaces alike–Peaches performing ‘Cut Piece’ is not comparable to BQ presenting a group of forgotten performance artists, and yet those two experiences stuck with me the most. Perhaps its their authentic reflections on the current state of affairs. When funding for the arts is being cut and there are whispers of an exodus of collectors from Berlin, perhaps we can all afford to experiment a bit more than we have been lately, and ask ourselves: are big names all it takes to pull visitors? And will that be enough to feed the appetites of a politically divided society, seeking empathy and comfort in art?
Exhibition Info
Gropius Bau
Yoko Ono: ‘Music of the Mind’
Exhibition: Apr. 11–Aug. 31, 2025
berlinerfestspiele.de
Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin, click here for map
Capitain Petzel
Monica Bonvicini: ‘It is Night Outside’
Exhibition: May 1–June 7, 2025
capitainpetzel.de
Karl-Marx-Allee 45, 10178 Berlin, click here for map
BQ
Group Show: ‘The Brotherhood of New Blockheads’
Exhibition: May 3–June 28, 2025
bqberlin.de
Weydingerstraße 10, 10178 Berlin, click here for map
neugerriemschneider
Group Show: ‘advective motion, nebulous currents’
Exhibition: May 3–Aug. 16, 2025
gallery-weekend-berlin.de/neugerriemschneider
Linienstraße 155, 10115 Berlin, click here for map
Klemm’s
Leelee Chan: ‘Spiral Diaries’
Exhibition: May 2–June 6, 2025
klemms-berlin.com
Leipziger Straße 57/58, 10117 Berlin, click here for map
