by Monica Salazar // July 29, 2025
It seems fitting that Künstlerhaus Bethanien’s large glass facade opens up into Krys Huba’s exhibition ‘All of the records; tell me, bee Becoming B – Chapter 2’: an insight into a person, put on display. Carcasses of IKEA furniture are partially dressed in poured latex, which is draped there where the shelves would hang and things would go. This greeny-yellowish skin is inscribed or scarred or tattooed with drawings and notes; telegrams. These structures are dotted around the open space and, walking around, I feel a bit like a giant next to skyscrapers. The contrast between the speciously robust IKEA furniture and the fluid material renders the former impotent and awkward. The paintings on the wall are misty, the dark tones that dominate weighty, the linen sheets above them airy. Unidentifiable bodies and partially clothed memories communicate feelings of nostalgia, even if this is a type of longing that implies difficulties. The text that activates the installation breathes something into the room, but I can’t really say exactly what. I think I am engaging with relics of time that are being deconstructed, while the artist reconstructs and retraces existence, tentatively.
I leave the visual noise of the room behind and enter into the main hall, which stages the remainder of the six residents’ exhibitions. Despite its openness, the use of light–sometimes abrasive, sometimes warm–creates a partitioning between each stage that feels natural.
I enter a dark room. Four bollards of different heights are made of what look like round glass side tables. They have burrowed their way out of the ground and are demarcated by rings of red sand, out of which randomly pop delicate yellow veins. Gyuchul Moon’s ‘Ontophonics’ is a sound factory.
Custom built circuit boards (roughly 5×5 inches) house yellow Physarum polycephalum, a single celled type of slime mold. We see it feeding on singular bloated oats. The condensation at the top of the glass box indicates life: ontos. The room’s climate shapes the work. Relative humidity or dryness will decide the mold’s rate of growth. As the Physarium unfolds itself over the circuit board, it creates connections and, in so doing, creates sound. It grows and it shifts shapes and interacts with the board in new ways, developing itself and communicating its environment.
Gyuchul Moon: ‘Ontophonics,’ installation view, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2025
Rotating speakers below the circuit boards evenly distribute the signals that are being transmitted. The sound is deep. Without visual clues, it would be difficult to identify its source. The different circuit connections amalgamate in a saturated chorus that is both disconcerting and comforting. It reminds me of a prepubescent-sounding industrial fan or a fishing reel attached to a chugging motor. The repetition is soothing and the whizz is hypnotic. We are made aware of the voiceless. How are things made intelligible? What are the technical processes at work in manipulating this being and our understanding of it? Today, the relationship between living beings and technology is both a question of concern and promise. ‘Ontophonics’ creates connections to the unconnected and experiences of the inexperienced. It is not amplification but rather, translation; a form of translation that makes you feel strange, as it always does.
I make my way around the other exhibitions, my eyes adjusting. It feels appropriate to see all five exhibitions on the ground floor before moving upstairs, which houses Areez Katki’s ‘How to puncture the sky and hear the stones sing,’ as it feels somewhat separate from the other exhibitions, not just spatially but also conceptually.
Areez Katki: ‘How to puncture the sky and hear the stones sing,’ installation view, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2025 // © Galya Feierman
This exhibition is made up of that below and of that above, you in the middle. Short memoirs–maybe fragments of a novel or narrative–are placed on marble cobbletones, dotted around the mezzanine. They form part of a larger work and it is up to you to piece it together. Hanging from the ceiling is a bank of 41 embroidered cloths, fluttering through the air: some slumped, some bulging, all floating. A mix of field recordings permeates that space in between. With the chatter reflecting from every surface in this hollow and echoing room, I am made to feel as though I am alone in a crowd, time has stood still and I am completely in control of movement. It is almost cinematic the way the different forms of fabric–both the literal and literary–interact with one another. Despite this stillness, the exhibition feels active. Parts of the memoir start to wander around, being left here and there, for someone else to pick up. Maybe part of it even goes home with you.
I left the exhibitions at Künstlerhaus Bethanien thinking about deconstruction and processing in different ways. It might be a theme that comes up regularly, but it was a theme that, aside from the exhibitions noted above, also appeared in the other shows on view—Valinia Svoronou’s ‘The Birdwatcher’s Vigil,’ Uri Zamir’s ‘Divine Fatigue’ and Sjur Eide Aas’ ‘Old Dog Learning New Tricks’–each in different ways. It is a theme that helped me catch my balance as I stumbled from room to room. The focus on details, maybe even their isolation or abstraction, implicates visitors in questioning traditions, temporalities, memories and fictions.
Exhibition Info
Künstlerhaus Bethanien
Krys Huba: ‘All of the records; tell me, bee Becoming B – Chapter 2’
Valinia Svoronou ‘The Birdwatcher’s Vigil’
Gyuchul Moon: ‘Ontophonics’
Uri Zamir: ‘Divine Fatigue’
Sjur Eide Aas: ‘Old Dog Learning New Tricks’
Areez Katki: ‘How to puncture the sky and hear the stones sing’
Exhibition: July 18–Sept. 14, 2025
bethanien.de
Kottbusser Straße 10, 10999 Berlin, click here for map
