People's Justice by Taring Padi 

documenta 15 opened last week with all the journalists going on Antisemitismus hunt. First reports were of a lively, uplifting, relaxing experience that "succesfully rejects the western art market" (whatever we define this to be) and "builds a different economy which is not only talking about sharing ressources, but practising it." The German Prime Minister Steinmeier scolded the Indonesian curators for not having invited any Israeli artists (not Jewish artists, artists from Israel) to this German show founded (conceptualized) by former Nazis. Right on. Right on.

And then it happened. A few days after the Preview weekend, the 20-year-old pannel work "People's Justice" (2002) from the Collective Taring Padi came up; I can only assume it wasnt ready for the opening days, as any other explanation seems insane and very badly calculated. The panel includes a caricature of Israeli soldiers wearing SS helmets. The work was promptly covered again (somehow there was a gigantic black sheet at hand?), and has been since been taken down completely. It took a few days but the curators issued a convinicing statement of apology. The artists collective TARING PADI also issued a statement . A long and thorough discussion has emerged about racist, Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian or other hate-based imagery in the arts as well as Germany's deeply complicated issue of Nazi descendant wealth... No. No it didnt. Right wing machinery is having a feast on this, calling for more controlls or while you are at it the cancellation of documenta all together, while we, social media art critics still confuse Indonesia with Thailand. 

Meanwhile, another Berlin Bienalle opened and passed without a beep. BB has, after all, a strong tradition of navel-gazing to uphold.

And in blokey, chummy dollar land….This show had to be postponed for two years due to the pandemic. Two years of individual and collective pain, trauma, a break through for the Black Lives Matter movement ( sort of), a new discourse about care and sustainability, feminism and queerness, the threat of nuclear war, inflation and currently the looming recession… Jeff Koons soaked that all in…
And yet he persisted. This installation, just opened at Deste Foundation's outpost on Hydra island is called Apollo. Groundbreaking stuff. M.Arndt was there to report.

New! Art Edition @Bpigs

Art Claims Impulse and Marlot Meyer present this Bio Extended NFT series. The project  is a continuation, a conclusion, of the installation Touchground Sim-biocene by Marlot Meyer at ACI earlier this year. In the installation, a small ecosystem was created that grew wheatgrass in the end. The help of the visitors was necessary, who activated an irrigational system by their presence and movements alone and thus kept the eco-system alive. In the end, shapes were to be cut out of the grown wheatgrass, which were then offered as works of art. The fact that media art was used to create the wheatgrass shapes inspired us to develop this approach further.
With the purchase of a Bio-Extended NFT, the buyer receives a 3D scan of the original and also a wheatgrass artwork within 3 weeks, created from the Touch Ground Sim-biocene installation.
Current price: ETH 1.8 ($2,032.38)
Buy or make an offer here
contact the gallery on info@art-claims-impulse.com

THIS WEEK

Opening Thursday June 23rd at 19h at Haus am Lützowplatz: DEBORAH POYNTON: FOLLY

The exhibition „Folly“, which was curated by Marc Wellmann in close consultation with the artist, also ties in with the preoccupation with the old masters‘ traditions of the genre of painting in the context of the present. The title chosen by Deborah Poynton herself cannot be translated into German without barriers. It can denote ’naive stupidity‘, ‚foolery‘ or ‚insanity‘, but it also serves as a technical term for a particular form of 18th-century ornamental building.  „Could there be a better word to describe these paintings that ape classicism, play at being meaningful, and which are entirely constructed but seem real?“ (Poynton)- see more here
Artist talk: Saturday, June 25, 2022, 4 pm
24 Jun 2022 – 4 Sep 2022
Haus am Lützowplatz
Lützowplatz 9
10785 Berlin

FRIDAY , 24 JUN, 15.00H – 22.00H AT SILENT GREEN ALEX SCHWEDER / MIEKO SUZUKI: THE BREATH BEFORE- presented by Aboutnow & Galerie Barbara Thumm

The Breath Before is an architecturally scaled instrument for the simultaneous composition of sound and space. Developed as collaboration between New York performance architect Alex Schweder and Japanese sound artist Mieko Suzuki, it materializes the artists’ site-specific response to the neoclassical mausoleum built to serve Berlin’s first crematorium. With its octagonal layout, two continuous galleries, and countless niches in the walls, and – most importantly – its 17-metre-high domed ceiling, the historic space still imparts the aura of a transitional space to this day. Recently transformed as part of the cultural venue Silent Green, visitors will be able to experience The Breath Before as an immersive location-specific event in June 2022. Tickets via Eventbrite here

The Breath Before was created in 2020 for the A L’ARME!, an avant garde music festival that supports new artistic collaborations such as theirs as part of its mission. Get your tickets for this year's edition here
Tickets via Eventbrite here
24 Jun 2022 – 26 Jun 2022
silent green Kulturquartier
Gerichtstraße 35
13347 Berlin

OPENING SAT, 25 JUN, 19H AT SCOTTY FREIHEIT (FREEDOM) Open call group show

Exhibiting artists: Anja Asche, Eric Beier, Gyde Becker, Niina Lehtonen Braun, Kuno Ebert, Barbara Eitel, Albrecht Ferch, Nathalie Giraud, Sabine Hilscher, Mareike Jacobi, Kerstin von Klein, Irina Novarese, Nike Ossler, Franziska Peter, Julia Pitschmann, Holger Pohl, Katharina Poos, Janis Schroeder, Sabine Schründer, Min Sook, Lorina Speder, Anna Staffel, Christina Stark, Manuel Tozzi, Urun Unal und Babette Werth

The artist run space SCOTTY offers artists and curators an open platform for exhibitions, alternative formats of arts education and interdisciplinary projects. The project space is independent of the market, self-determined and free of hierarchy free. The subject matter of SCOTTY’s work is based on annual themes / focal points, which are defined for a period of one to one and a half years.
25 Jun 2022 – 30 Jul 2022
SCOTTY
Oranienstr. 46
10969 Berlin

SAT JUNE 25th 18-19h @Axelobiger GUIDED TOUR KINGSIZE with Maslowski|Grenzhaeuser

The photographic and cinematic sketches in the omprehensive work of Maslowski/Grenzhaeuser are based on fictional stories in which they are always the protagonists. Maslowski/Grenzhaeuser has been an artist duo since 1993. In the course of their collaboration, a comprehensive work of fictional stories has emerged in which they are always the protagonists. Their photographic and cinematic sketches are inspired by very different social spheres, cultures and genres.

4 Jun 2022 – 2 Jul 2022
Axel Obiger – Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst
Brunnenstr. 29
10119 Berlin

TUESDAY JUNE 28TH, 18:30 AT OYOUN: READING OF "BREAKING BORDERS TO BUILD BRIDGES: 20 YEARS OF WOMEN IN EXILE" (event in English)

After the reading there will be time for questions from the audience. Moderation: Napuli L.
The event is open for all genders.
Women* in Exile are an initiative of refugee women* founded in Brandenburg in 2002 by refugee women* to fight for their rights. They decided to organize as a refugee women*’s group because they have made the experience that refugee women* are doubly discriminated. They do not only experience the racist and discriminative general refugee laws, but also are they discriminated as women*. In 2011 the group decided to include friends without flight background and thus became Women* in Exile and Friends. In 2012, they started to build a network of refugee women*, groups and individuals working with refugee women* nationwide.
admission free
www.oyoun.de
OYOUN
Lucy-Lameck-Str. 32
12049 Berlin

LAST CHANCE

AKINBODE AKINBIYI MAY AYIM: DICHTERIN. 1996.

The exhibition presents a delicate collection carefully selected from Akinbiyi’s personal archival images of 1996, documenting and mourning - and celebrating the timelessness of May Ayim's work and its disclosure of undeniably uncomfortable truths.
"May Ayim: Dichterin. 1996." is part of rongin shagor, an artistic intervention connecting a number of multidisciplinary and multilingual artists to a poem by May Ayim.
unti 30 Jun 2022, 12-8pm
OYOUN
Lucy-Lameck-Str. 32
12049 Berlin

EIGEN ART LAB: LŐRINC BORSOS FEAR NOT THE HEAT AHEAD, IT'S THE FIRE THAT FOLLOWS

pyropoetic visions at the end of the world fear not the heat ahead, it's the fire that follows, so fear not the thermal conditions of the inferno, but worry about all the cursed souls you will have to burn with, so fear not the blaze of hell, but brood about the scorching fire plumes of the mundane purgatory, so fear not the dystopian reality you are fully immersed into, but worry about the selfdestructing hedonism that makes you find pleasure in it…
until 25 Jun 2022
EIGEN + ART Lab
Torstraße 220
10115 Berlin

OTHERING 

with Yalda Afsah, Julian Charrière, Albrecht Dürer, Francisco de Goya, Andreas Greiner, Jenna Sutela, Analisa Teachworth, Jol Thoms, Sung Tieu und Jonas Wendelin
The twelve artists explore how certain lives—human and nonhuman—are designated as alien, and the possibilities of forging relationships across the yawning chasm of self and other.
until 25 Jun 2022
DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM
Linienstraße 23
10178 Berlin