6th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art
Founded in 1996 by Klaus Biesenbach, founding director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Berlin Biennale has established itself as an open space that experiments, identifies and critically examines the latest trends in the art world. It is shaped by the different concepts of well-known curators appointed to enter into a dialogue with the city, its general public, the people interested in art as well as the artists of this world.
This year’s Biennale, entitled what is waiting out there, has been curated by Kathrin Rhomberg who is attempting to raise urgent questions about our present time.
‘I want it to speak of the cracks in reality, about the gap between the world that is talked about and the world that is actually there. And also to ask why we have these distinctions and self-deceptions, why we have a fictional arsenal of mass media and consumption, and about the rhetorics of distraction and pacification.’
For the 6th Berlin Biennale, a selection of drawings by the great 19th-century German realist painter, Adolph Menzel, is on display at the Alte Nationalgalerie. The contemporary works are juxtaposed with an historical approach intended to contextualize the direction of view taken by the Biennale.
We will be visiting the highlights of the Biennale at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and at Oranienplatz in Kreuzberg, a former department store which has been re-opened for the festival. The majority of the featured artists are housed in the building at Oranienplatz. We will also visit the Alte Nationalgalerie to view the work by Alfred Menzel.
Featured artists include: Mark Boulos, Mohamed Bourouissa, Petrit Halilaj, Anna Witt, John Smith, Phil Collins, Roman Ondak, Ron Tran, Danh Vo, Marie Voignier, Ferhat Ozgur and Nilbar Gures.
Sammlung Hoffmann Collection
We have organised a special visit on Saturday to the Sammlung Hoffmann Collection, a private collection of modern and contemporary art amassed by Erika and Rolf Hoffmann since the 1960s. Located on two floors of a former factory building, the Hoffmanns renovated and remodelled the space in view of living and working with the artworks they had collected over the past 30 years.
Every summer, Erika Hoffmann changes the entire display, rotating the collection and shifting the works around to reveal new relationships and conflicts between works of different generations which she hopes, will inspire reflection and discussions on aesthetic and philosophical issues as well as social and political conditions.
