Nymphius Projekte: Exhibitions by Friederike Nymphius

Art Forum Berlin September, 2006

BIG CITY LAB

With a graphic concept by Paul Snowden

Saâdane Afif, John M. Armleder, Jordi Bernadó, Jeremy Blake, Keren Cytter, Stéphane Dafflon, Tacita Dean, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset , Angus Fairhurst, Berta Fischer, Carsten Fock, Alicia Framis, Carlos Garaicoa, Torben Giehler, Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom, Sabine Groß, Peter Halley, Anthony Hernandez, Lori Hersberger, Jeroen Jongeleen, Till Krause, Antal Lakner, Brandon Lattu, Erik van Lieshout, Jen Liu, Stefan Löffelhardt, Bernhard Martin, Søren Martinsen,  Maix Mayer, Josephine Meckseper, Ryuji Miyamoto,  Nils Norman, Markus Oehlen, Jack Pierson,  Anselm Reyle, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Dennis Rudolph,  Paul Snowden,  Sean Snyder, Frank Thiel, Vangelis Vlahos,  Akram Zaatari
 
Berlin is no longer an island. Berlin is an international hub, a lab and a label. Here is space for ideas. This is most palpable in springtime. As soon as the temperature rises above 10° C and the first rays of sunlight pierce the gray blanket of cloud, Berlin café operators set up tables on sidewalks and squares. Warmly bundled people from all over the world read newspapers or converse excitedly there. The wind spreads a spring mood that everything is possible. The art, fashion, music, and design that have developed in Berlin studios over the long, cold winter soak the scene on the street with new ideas and images.

After the fall of communism, Berlin developed into a laboratory that constantly redefines itself. The large number of unused buildings and industrial fallow spaces creates the spatial preconditions for this. These places are the basis for temporary usage and raise spontaneity to the level of principle. From here, young, efficient, professionally working global networks of artists function. The progressive back courtyard factories of contemporary art, music, fashion, and design are located here. What is “new” can often be discovered earlier here than in the classic institutions. For joiners and newcomers in all creative fields, these “residual spaces” are essential: the availability of low-priced studios allows them to work under a minimum of financial pressure, while the special, raw aesthetic of the surroundings inspires them. Clubs and scene shops follow; and gallery operators open their spaces here, recognizing the innovative potential of this situation.

This scenario is at the foundations of the concept of BIG CITY LAB. But it cannot be limited solely to Berlin. In recent years, visual artists have found their point of reference in the pulsing life of international capitals, as the sites of social, political, and cultural renewal. Artists from New York, Madrid, Berlin, London, Seoul, and Sydney live in a constant exchange, so that the importance of site and time has meanwhile been relativized for them. The fall of the Berlin Wall and its consequences have also greatly altered the appearance of many metropolises, opened up new perspectives and connections, and given rise to a new international feeling of being in a boom and boosterism period. That is why BIG CITY LAB is the title of this year’s special exhibition at the ART FORUM BERLIN. It refers to the big cities that, since the crystallization of urban centers in the 19th century, have been seen as laboratories of the modern experience of the world. As “experimental fields of modernity”, they are still subject today to continuous processes of transformation that constantly give new orientation to the cosmos of the big city.