|
The Artnews Society opened its exhibition space, Artnews Projects, at Brunnenstrasse 188 in Berlin-Mitte on the the 30th of September last year. The organisation publishing the online magazine, Artnews.info, hereby expanded from the internet to an exhibition platform for young contemporary art. This exhibition space will follow the international character of Artnews.info by inviting artists, galleries and curators from other cities and countries to realise a show and experiment with new positions in Berlin.
|
 |
Artnews Projects – Christiane von Gilsa
The Artnews Society opened its exhibition space, Artnews Projects, at Brunnenstrasse 188 in Berlin-Mitte on the the 30th of September last year. The organisation publishing the online magazine, Artnews.info, hereby expanded from the internet to an exhibition platform for young contemporary art.
This exhibition space will follow the international character of Artnews.info by inviting artists, galleries and curators from other cities and countries to realise a show and experiment with new positions in Berlin.
With “Upstream,” the project’s first exhibition, Artnews Projects presented Cristian Andersen, Marc Bijl, David Haines and Lucy Wood. The show was curated by Nieck de Bruijn, director of Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam.
Cristian Andersen’s work is often situated on the border between civilization and nature, between an urban no-man’s land and the deserted places at city fringes. A wooden stick, that at first seems to be an objet trouvé, turns out to be a sculpture, bending itself into the word “Lost.” The works and interventions of the Dutch artist Marc Bijl are based upon social issues and their use of symbols and rules. On the exhibition wall, Bijl sprayed the words “Too sad to kill you,” like common graffiti. British artist David Haines creates contemplative and obsessive drawings, songs and videos to connect with the unfamiliar—he offers personal representations of the anonymous figures central to his voyeuristic pursuits, he locates poetic contexts in ambiguous texts drawn from online forums and, through his observations, seemingly banal scenarios prove to be extraordinarily multifaceted. Lucy Wood presents an installation about the life of the convicted British serial killer Mary Ann Cotton in a family tree construction. Documented in birth, death and marriage certificates of herself are her several husbands and children, all poisoned with arsenic.
With the second exhibition, Artnews Projects presented the “Association of Friends and Promoters of Time-Based Media Art in Metropolitan Areas— Rio.” An exhibition with over 100 young artists and musicians based in Berlin, filling the showroom with their drawings, videos, paintings, photos, sculptures, media, music, madness—welcome to Rio. This show reflected the creative chaos for which Berlin is notorious in the international art world. Of course, the opening night ended with a wild party.
Next, Artnews Projects returned to its international concept by presenting artists from the Danish gallery Mogadishni, located in Copenhagen and Aarhus. Mogadishni is known for its profile as an “experimental, cutting-edge venture that emphasizes a social as much as an aesthetic context for contemporary art.” This third show at Artnews Projects was curated by Christian Chapelle, director of Mogadishni.
