Thaw on Saturday
Berlin's winter thaw exposes raw art and emotional chaos in studios
Berlin has to face the fact that it's essentially Siberia now. I'm striding across the crunching snow in my new Norwegian sweater, bathed in Siberian morning sunlight, heading toward the Colosseum. Personal trainer and cobbler deity Kenny Mistelbauer had set the rallying cry for the 2026 fitness offensive: 10,000 steps a day.
The odds of me ever seeing a film at the Berlinale were always vanishingly slim. Not only am I technically and mentally incapable of buying tickets online, but my religion also strictly forbids queueing in any form. The day before, though, fairy-like Uli wrote: "Let's go see the Douglas Gordon film—there are still tickets!"
Douglas Gordon has long intrigued me, and not just since he decreed that his edition for Texte zur Kunst's anniversary—a music box playing The Internationale—should be given away for free, and I snagged one. What I didn't know: his Berlin studio is a shadowy wonder-chamber of a cave where this untypically Berlinale, scriptless chamber piece unfolds.
Gordon rampages through his atelier, sets things ablaze, and drunkenly bickers with the filmmaker in a boozy, sophistic quagmire. By the end, he's weeping copiously and calling his mother. Deeply moving and slightly repulsive. A masterpiece that leaves you in an inexplicably great mood.
On the way back, I pick up my freshly refurbished Jil Sander boots from Kenny at Oderberger. He's really worked miracles on them. The rest of Friday is a blur of collecting our foster dog Molly, driving to our little house in Britz, firing up the fireplace for cheese fondue, watercolor painting, and screen printing. Then—surprise!—the dog needed to go out, so we made a late-night studio visit to artist Ellen DeElaine, who's prepping her big mid-career show in May: old-master-style oil paintings scrawled over with childlike doodles. Be surprised!
By Saturday, the Siberian winter has given way to a vile thaw, leaving slippery slush trails that reek of wet dog and old hammered metal. No 10,000 steps today. "Klassik, Pop etc." on Deutschlandfunk was a total washout again. Incidentally, I firmly believe total artist Timm Ulrichs should be invited onto the show. The man is 85! Speaking of which, I call Timmi and arrange the finissage for his and Ursula Neugebauer's small exhibition, "Das Zeitliche Segnen" (Bidding Time Farewell), at the Foerster Collection's Britz outpost for next Saturday, five to ten.
Then the grand tour begins. At Galerie Burster, Eglė Otto presents feminist-surrealist large-format works in dialogue with Alex Feuerstein. "Fortuna with Turmeric Thighs"—reminiscent of Dalí's "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans"—was inspired by the artist's mother, a nutritionist, explains curator Joey in her cerulean-blue sweater: the chaos of motherhood symbolized by sonically pulverized vegetables.
Next door, in our beloved project space Roam, photos and stories explore the lives of people of color in the GDR, but we have to press on to the Majerus Estate, where the final evening of the "Lectures on Lectures" series revisits Michel's ten-month scholarship stint in Los Angeles back in 2000. On display is one of his monumental billboard paintings, "Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft" (Germano-American Friendship), featuring a Loriot figure perched on the iconic California signage. The whole of Majerus in a single image.
Prenzlberg Moms Cross the Street
I totally relate—having just applied for a scholarship in California myself. The screening shows a young, lanky Michel delivering a lecture in broken English to students at Pasadena Art Center in 2001. Less than a year later, his plane would crash. Heartbreaking stuff, though the dog isn't allowed inside and proceeds to bark the place down. Onward to the other end of town, to Galerie Kai Erdmann, as we'd promised Kurt von Bley.
Kurt—like Douglas Gordon—is an incredibly kind and sensitive soul, even if Prenzlberg moms cross the street to avoid his piercings and facial tattoos. His pill sculptures with car air filters are brilliant allegories for our vulnerable existence in the fossil age. Period. Column quota met. Sunday was all about recovery.
