BERLIN.STATUS (1) investigates the big-city phenomenon of art, starting out from the observation that Berlin today is “an art city with no consensus”. The exhibition presents artists who doubt in the necessity for large-scale mobilisation and are therefore working intellectually and aesthetically to supplement or sharpen their own very personal profile. Although they have definitely moved the focus of their lives to Berlin permanently, it is not “the Berlinesque” here that provides fertile ground for the extraordinary, but the individual ability shown by every outstanding artist. For BERLIN.STATUS (1), therefore, the curators have selected both well- and lesser-known artists: the common characteristic being that they are laboratory practicians – pure and idiosynchratic.
The main conceptual interest of the exhibition curators is in the doubt inherent in almost all current tendencies: “Somewhere, there is always ‘one small village in Gaul’. We search for that and reveal nuances of change by distancing, i.e. the signals prior to radical change, not trends. We ignore the opposition of ‘newcomers’ and ‘established artists’ because the market is greedy; in the end it will turn everything into mincemeat, but now and then we ought to consider a more innovative dish.”
(Sven Drühl & ChristophTannert).