Fernanda Gomes @ 401Contemporary, Berlin

Brunnenstrasse is home to many small galleries and projects such as “Curator’s Without Borders”.  The gallery called “401Contemporary” is located in Berlin-Mitte, North East of the city center just a stone’s throw from Rosenthaler Platz. http://www.401contemporary.com/index.html

And here we are, apparently, back in a white on white world.

Upon entering the gallery you see 2 square “canvases”, which are more likely wood boxes of different thickness.  These are hung directly opposed to the front door and at an uncomfortable, yet welcome, unconventional height, spanning appx 5-6.5 feet from bottom to top.  Once you walk up to it you realize that that is all it is painted wood #1 and #2, but then you immediately notice the tiny  details in all the things around you.  Like the not-so-well-painted pedestal to the left with 2 masonite boards whose tops are also hastily painted white, leaving the sides its bare natural off-white/tan.  Then you realize that the window, which is draped in clear plastic tarp- the self same draping that made you think the space was closed- is actually an art piece composed in layers of opacity displaying white, white on white, off white,  and almost clear.  Strips and blocks of this tarp, possibly window winterizing plastic, makes a decidedly crude window dressing, even if it were only to indicate renovation, but somehow it works even if only from the inside after understanding its context.

After only a few minutes I am aware of a heightened sensitivity to the architecture of the space, which makes me wish that the floors, the one non-white solid coloured surface, had been painted white for this show.  Also irksome are the exposed fluorescent tubes, flickering their hue flattening curse– something which I can almost not blame gallery for, since this is, I have discovered, a universal phenomena in Berlin, galleries and museums alike.

 

Review: Douglas Blau

Douglas Blau- at the Institute of Contemporary Art of the University of Pennsylvania

Suzannah Gerber

In the front gallery of the ICA is a collection of images:

photocopies, collages, and commercial postcards assembled in a hodgepodge, like an under-decorated scrapbook.  The gallery walls here are more reminiscent of the walls of an artist’s studio and operate more like an archive of images that relate to the mind of one person rather than an exhibition of resolved works of art.  A clear aesthetic sensibility emerges,

as we ca

n see what the artist self-selects, and what parts he chooses to magnify, repeat or collage.  Images from the Italian Renaissance such as the College of Athens by Leonardo Da Vinci begin in color, as with a small postcard reproduction, and then shift to black and white in a photocopy that is blown up in scale, and in turn juxtaposed with a smiling Indian girl in native dress.  The overall presentation is of a cabinet of wonders, a “my life in pictures”, and serves as a para-historical autobiographical survey of art.  The wall-text alludes to this by suggesting that the images are meant simply “to be enjoyable to look at”, while the curatorial handout states that the artist creates “an essential cast of characters and repertoire of plots, periods, styles, locations, and genres… the details and degrees of abstraction vary over time and through reproduction.”