What to See at Berlin Art Week 2018

For a few days in September, since 2012, Berlin Art Week has been taking over the city’s most prestigious artistic spaces. From the immense halls of the Hamburger Bahnhof, to the newer walls of the Berlinische Galerie, this year Berlin Art Week will even open up the grand hangars of the now defunct Tempelhof Airport.

Running September 26 to 30 for its seventh year, Berlin Art Week 2018 will feature an overflowing number of small gallery shows, exclusive exhibitions, and openings. It will also play host to the European Month of Photography and Positions Art Fair Berlin.

While choosing where to go and what to see is always difficult, curators have made the job even more straining this year. Berliners and guests alike, choose wisely.

Here are our top five picks for Berlin Art Week 2018.

Evelyn Taocheng Wang, What is he afraid of? at KW

Chinese artist Evelyn Taocheng Wang will show two films and a selection of large fabric installations in a completely new exhibition for KW’s Pause series. Beginning on September 27, until the 30, Wang will explore the links between identity and culturally relevant autobiographical structures.

Dealing with subjects of transition and transformation, Wang will adapt and build on ideas present in the fairy tale The Princess and the Frog. The KW’s exhibition hall and Wang’s new works are set to inform each other, perpetuating the cycle of relative identity presented by the Chinese artist.

Don’t forget, you can catch Wang at the KW’s artist talk, September 30, at 17:00.

Julian Charrière, As We Used To Float at Berlinische Galerie

As a sponsor of Berlin Art Week, the festival will also play host to the GASAG Art Prize award. Julian Charrière is this year’s winner and as such will have the opportunity to present his As We Used To Float installation at Kreuzberg’s Berlinische Galerie.

The Swiss artist has created a 3D video installation simulating life under the Pacific Ocean. This underwater presence reflects on humans’ impacts on the earth and its geography in a nuclear age.

Based in Berlin, Charrière also works in the overlapping disciplines of sound, visual, and conceptual art, often in relation to environmental science.

European Month of Photography (EMOP) 2018 at C/O Berlin and others

The eighth edition of Germany’s largest photography festival, the EMOP will take place in Berlin from September 28 until October 31. Taking over venues across Berlin and Potsdam every two years, the festival presents a selection of both contemporary and historical photography.

This year, focused around the theme of “Photography and Temporality,” the EMOP will exhibit in approximately 120 venues, with the C/O Foundation at its center as curator. In the midst of hundreds of exhibitions, the flagship displays will be C/O’s Back to the Future. The 19th century in the 21st century, featuring photos by artists like Matthew Brandt and Spiros Hadjidjanos, as well as the retrospective exhibition of Nicholas Nixon, Life Work.

Agnieszka Polska, The Demon’s Brain at Hamburger Bahnhof

Combining live action sequences, animation, and encrypted artefacts, Polish artist Agnieszka Polska aims to analyze the state of our current world and our role within it.

Beginning on September 27, Polska will use the Hamburger Bahnhof’s large hall for her multimedia video installations. In order to draw links between historical artefacts and our relationship to the world that created them, Polska will analyze the social scenario within Poland’s salt mines of the 1400s.

Within the context of an immersive sound installation, Polska will explore mythology, philosophy and a socio-political series of meditations on our existence on earth.

Berliner Festspiele Presents: The New Infinity at Hamburg Planetarium at Mariannenplatz

Berliner Festspiele’s latest instalment of immersive art focuses on creating works for planets.

Berliner Festspiele is presenting their latest project in collaboration with Berlin Art Week 2018, beginning on September 26. The New Infinity exhibition will be located in a temporary planetarium dome on Kreuzberg’s Mariannenplatz.

Artists including Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon, William Basinski, and David OReilly will soundtrack and create the virtual experience within Hamburg Planetarium’s Kuppelsaal (domed hall). The exhibition seeks to explore a transcendence of perceptive boundaries through virtual reality.

Cover image: Positions Art Fair 2017. Photo by Oana Popa, courtesy Kulturprojkete Berlin and Berlin Art Week.