Convoy Berlin [antikvár]

CONVOY BERLIN Having established itself over the course of several years as a great city of the arts, Berlin is now clearly counted as one of the most important capitals of contemporary visual art worldwide. To the extent that the city's potential was still recognized primarily by insiders during the 1990s, Berlin— the European Mecca of the visual arts, as It were—now enjoys an enviable reputation and thus invariably attracts art enthusiasts, collectors, curators, gallery owners and artists from across the globe. Indeed, artists seem to be especially taken by the city, so that the constant stream of those who continue to relocate the central focus of their lives and achievements to Berlin would scarcely seem likely to let up any time soon. Evermore artists are allured by Berlin's intense atmosphere and eager to enjoy the ideal working conditions it offers. It is thus accordingly that the artists represented in the Convoy Berlin exhibition have also chosen the city as their place of residence, with one third of those participating having moved to Berlin from abroad—thereby reflecting a trend that has persisted for years. The city summons cultural producers from throughout the world who view Berlin as a place full of exciting possibilities. Though the rent prices are, admittedly, no longer as low as they were fifteen years ago, and though the amount of free space has dwindled, studios still remain more affordable than elsewhere and available spaces yet easier to come by than in other comparable metropolises. Though also true that Berlin has witnessed its own transformation from a place for improvised art events into a centre of the global art market, it has never ceased to leave room for new developments and thus preserved the mood and feeling of the first few years that followed the fall of the Berlin wall, in which new possibilities, new horizons and the winds of change were in the air. Over the course of this prolonged period of upheavals, marked by a spirit of enthusiastic embarkment, a tremendous art scene with a plurality of subgroups has emerged. It is this scene into which Convoy Berlin provides insight, thereby illuminating the greatest possible range of areas and aspects that comprise the artistic landscape of Berlin.The rich diversity of the Berliner scene reflected in the present exhibition precludes any conformity toward any single, unified idea, instead encouraging visitors to involve themselves with each individual stance. Although the city—with its everpresent history—offers an abundance of material for artistic investigation, it does not itself constitute, in the works presented here, the subject of the artists' concerns but has rather provided the environment within which their creations have been engendered. Indeed, it is along these lines that Andrew Gilbert was emboldened toward leaving his Scottish homeland in order to grapple with its history and, in particular, the colonial history of the United Kingdom — which has meanwhile become almost his primary focus. Gilbert draws upon various epochs and regional occurrences, conjoins colonial rulers with colonised subjects and often integrates his own personality into the narrative, thus fashioning his own, corrected version of history—one in which he equates facts with fiction. Respectively, his drawings elicit accordingly disturbing, brutal and explicit impressions. Likewise brutal are the two photographs that Via Lewandowsky has created expressly for the exhibition. They portray the tattered remains of two monoblock chairs, the renowned 'world chairs' which are said meanwhile to have outnumbered the worldwide population of human beings. The careless ugliness of these chairs having long provoked the artist, Lewandowsky has first treated them with liquid nitrogen before handling them further with