100 galleries from 20 countries, 20 fashion designers, 25 up-and-coming artists plus many more positions in the special exhibitions and three awards – all this is on the programme of the tenth POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair. In addition to birthday cakes, visitors can look forward to a varied international anniversary programme. This year, the art marketplace POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair will be stirred up by a conspicuously large number of young positions. Themes such as social injustice, feminism, war and natural disasters dominate the artworks, reflecting today’s times and the most diverse realities of life. Therefore, the theme of digitalisation also crops up again and again, in the augmented reality artworks of Dennis Rudolph, the NFT section, but also in the painting, in almost machine-like brushstrokes. Reality management is omnipresent in art.
Fig. above: MAKSLA XO, Luciana Mariano, Home, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 90 cm, 2023, Courtesy of the artist and the gallery
More Highlights
Luciana Mariano‘s works seem to offer glimpses into doll’s houses. In the centre of the room there is always a set table, two chairs and behind them a window that cuts out part of the outside world for the viewers of the scene. The walls are painted yellow, red or blue, and the colour scheme creates a positive, even playful mood. But the first impression is deceptive. As is so often the case, the devil is in the detail, the threat lies hidden or, as is more appropriate here, behind the façade. While the tea is still steaming in the cup, a dismembered female body lies on the carpet, its pattern artfully framing the corpse. Or a flood makes pot and mishaps waft around the room. Abuse against women, social injustice and racism are themes to which Luciana Mariano responds. She herself said the beautiful sentence: “Artists can’t fix the world… but we can paint it.” The literally eerily moving art of the Latin American artist can be seen at MĀKSLA XO from Riga.
An open waffle iron with waffle hearts clinging to it. One of them clings valiantly to the upper surface, a detached fifth, a lone fighter. The 23-year-old Stuttgart artist, Carlo Krone zooms in on everyday objects on his canvases. The supposedly banal unfolds an undreamt-of potential with this attention, so that a wafer heart stuck to the top suddenly stands for all those who do not (want to) conform to “the norm”. The artist combines photorealistic sections with clearly recognisable rough brushstrokes. Edges sometimes appear roughly cut, like a poorly cropped object in Photoshop, giving each subject a digital, collage-like character. It is good to laugh at the daily grind and the hamster wheel; this is made possible in the bunk of Galerie Thomas Fuchs from Stuttgart.
Artist Leezie Kiambi‘s portraits show all the important parts of a face, everything it needs for sensory perception is there. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears and a surface on which everything sits. Very reduced in geometric shapes, almost collage-like, the faces are put together, everything rests – except the eyes. They cry, tears or blood, they are torn open, amazed, frightened, panicked, tired, drooping or simply staring lost into the void. Emotions and reactions are Leezie Kiambi’s hobbyhorse, she wants to paint and trigger feelings. She succeeds in this also because of her use of strong colours and patterns, which always contrast the predominantly sad eyes with tension. On view in the exhibition berth of the East African Art Endeavor Gallery from Szczecin.
The crocodile snaps at a bee, the giraffe can literally slide down the snake’s back. In all colours, Georg Haberler embroiders a fantastic animal world on the canvas. Here the bird is ten times as big as the lion, high-fiving the lioness. All settled, all quite happy, it seems. Rhinoceros and dachshund imitate the Bremen Town Musicians, which is what animals do when no one is looking. Georg Haberler‘s pictures are pure joy, in them there are no rules, no boundaries, no gravity, everyone jumps, hangs and bounces around like that. They praise absurdity, the child in all of us, the animals and the lightness that we hope will not be lost. On show at the Weserhalle bunkhouse from Berlin.
Vera Isler x POSITIONS
Textures, forms and colours characterise Vera Isler‘s oeuvre, but her approach to these three thematic pillars has varied over the decades.
In a special exhibition, we are presenting selected tapestries and collages from the 1960s and 1970s by the Berlin-born Polish-Swiss artist Vera Isler (1931-2015) in collaboration with the Vera Isler Estate (Blaue Blume, Basel).
Bernard Schultze x Artima POSITIONS
As if the coloured liquid had flooded the canvas, as if the colours were sucking themselves into the canvas and pulling themselves through the textile unchecked and on their own initiative, this is how the colour-intensive abstract works of the informal artist Bernard Schultze appear, even if it was he who brought the colours into their airy light courses. A meticulous process of creation hidden behind a façade of chance. As part of Artima POSITIONS, the special exhibition in which particularly noteworthy, rare positions are given a platform, Schultze’s triptych “Dance of the Air Spirits”, which is still available, will be shown this year.
WHERE?
Flughafen Tempelhof
Hangar 5 – 6
12101 Berlin
WHEN?
Opening:
Thursday, 14.09.2023 , 6 – 9 p.m.
Opening hours:
Friday, 15.09.2023, 12 – 14 h (VIP Hours)
14 – 20 h (regular opening hours)
Saturday, 16.09.2023, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Sunday, 17.09.2023, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
COSTS?
Regular: 20 Euro
Reduce: 10 Euro (Children and young people under 18 have free admission)
