Preview Berlin — Matilde Digmann

Pre­view Berlin is the newest of the many Berlin art fairs that opened in Sep­tem­ber. It could even be called the kid sis­ter of Art Forum Berlin, even though Pre­view Berlin had 9,000 vis­i­tors in its first year, thus mak­ing it one of the more impor­tant art events both in Berlin and inter­na­tion­ally. The fair emerged last year as a col­lab­o­ra­tion between the four Berlin gal­leries; Föderkoje, Galerie Jar­muschek, Galerie Kut­tner Siebert and Loop.

This year, Pre­view Berlin is being held at Backfabrik—in a space of 3,500 square meters. It is a gath­er­ing of 53 gal­leries from 11 dif­fer­ent coun­tries and, thus, a map­ping of the cur­rent art scene in Europe. Of course, most of the gal­leries are from Berlin, but the fair also fea­tures gal­leries and art from Den­mark, France, the Nether­lands and Switzer­land. Switzer­land in par­tic­u­lar seems to be well rep­re­sented. The gal­leries have been care­fully cho­sen by a panel of experts in a process which, in itself, took sev­eral months. The space has been planned out with great care, result­ing in a very inti­mate almost gallery-like experience.

Even though Pre­view Berlin fea­tures less estab­lished artists, the qual­ity remains very high, mak­ing this the place to be in order to dis­cover new tal­ent or trends. Pre­view Berlin is also con­tribut­ing to the art scene in gen­eral in Berlin, which has expe­ri­enced a ver­i­ta­ble boom with a total of three new fairs open­ing in recent years. Also, the num­ber of artists has gone up, increas­ing no less than 50 per­cent over the last ten years.

As always, the fairs are a way to get a pre­view of the next trends in art—what is on dis­play here might very well be in muse­ums next year. So what’s new? Well, it’s strik­ing that artists seem to have moved away from art­works of a mon­u­men­tal size. Rather, they are now focus­ing on smaller for­mats. An exam­ple of this is the work of Münich based artist Katja Eck­ert fea­tured by Dina4Projekte. Eckert’s minia­ture draw­ings almost dis­ap­pear on the large white wall, thus invit­ing the viewer in for a closer look. The works are very sim­ple depic­tions of pecu­liar lit­tle crea­tures who seem rather lost—both in their pos­tures, and in the neg­a­tive space of the blank paper sheet.

The vari­a­tion in top­ics is wide and ranges from ironic use of Dis­ney imagery, in Abel Neue Kunst, to ter­ror­ism, in ArtM­bassy. Two works, Glas­nost 1 and 2French, were pro­duced by artist Alain Declercq after he was sus­pected a ter­ror­ist by the French anti-terrorist brigade. Allegedly linked to Al Quaeda, Declercq decided to make two suitcases—one of which reveals a bla­tant imprint of a Colt 1911 while the other hardly con­ceals a Colt M4 car­bine whose bar­rel and butt stock pro­trude preposterously.

It seems like pho­tog­ra­phy has given way to paint­ing and, par­tic­u­larly, draw­ing this year, but a few pho­tographs did catch the eye.

The works of Peter Funch come across as very intrigu­ing since these pho­tographs of the streets of New York are not staged, but look as if they were. Here is a ques­tion­ing and mix­ing of real­ity and fic­tion. For the most part, the draw­ings rep­re­sented seem to have a strange sort of hor­ror vacui to them. They are doodle-like or fantasy-like depic­tions which seem to have been cre­ated in an almost stream-of-consciousness manner—a trend that can also be detected in instal­la­tions such as Snake­ship by Tessa Farmer. This is a rather creepy col­lec­tion of bones and dead insects hung in a sys­tem­atic yet messy fash­ion with an amaz­ing empha­sis on detail. How­ever, this piece in par­tic­u­lar does not invite the viewer to take a closer look given its rather mor­bid material.

On the lighter side is the Onto-Locher instal­la­tion piece by Olivier Ross, which in part, con­sists of the mate­ri­als that might be used to make a work of art. He thus inte­grated paint buck­ets, brushes, cof­fee and choco­late in ques­tion­ing the artis­tic process—a point also stressed by the artist through his tak­ing bites out of the work as well.

Also, a live fish lay­ing next to a wooden bat is an eye catcher as it puts into play issues of mercy killings while also mak­ing you shiver as the fish occa­sion­ally makes a jump for it, only to land again on its pedestal with a dry splash.