Sancho Silva is a strategist of spatial transformation. He blocks up windows or constructs corridors and rooms that completely alter the scale and topology of an exhibition space. In this way, he confuses the viewer’s perception in order to open up surprising new perspectives. Generally, however, it means that Silva creates a privileged position for the recipient. This permits the visitor to confirm his standpoint and so regain the assurance of his perspective. The dialectics of illusion and disillusion thus become a key component of the artistic method.

For his exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Sancho Silva is planning to construct a kind of 'stereoscopic sight machine'; while the viewer sits in a dentist’s chair, looking into the attached funnel-shaped sculptures, this machine bombards him with a rapid succession of images showing fragmentary sequences of movement through urban space in Berlin.

"The truly exciting aspect of Sancho Silva’s usually reserved works, installations and objects is the up-to-date way in which they sound out and re-define the trompe l’oeil and fake. Silva creates gaps in perception that appear to camouflage their character as art, but present various changes of perspective at the same time." (Valeria Schulte-Fischedick).



Cyclope, Studio 3,
September 29th – October 15th 2006,
Opening: Thursday, 28. September 2006, 19 h

The exhibition What is Modern Art? (Group Show) shows wide-ranging research into art history – not on the basis of old masters and originals, but on that of anonymity and the copy. It gathers together a series of works and projects that could be regarded as milestones on the road to an art form for which anonymity and copying have become an independent aesthetic method. What is Modern Art? (Group Show) is the first exhibition worldwide to bring together these projects for a comprehensive group exhibition in Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Galerie 35 and the Museum of American Art in Berlin.

In the Künstlerhaus, it will be possible to see work including the series Collection of Drawings of an Art Amateur Made on his Travels through a Mysterious and Faraway Land (1900), Modern Art from the Museum Folkwang (Hagen 1904) and From the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1905-1913); these are all works by the Salon de Fleurus (New York), which investigates 19th or early 20th century art. In addition, we will be showing the extensive International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show) and the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 by Kasimir Malevich – two significant exhibitions for 20th century art, which took place in 1913 and 1916, in the USA and Russia respectively. Besides this it will be possible to see new works from the Museum of American Art, opened in Berlin in 2004, which specifically concern the documenta 2 (1959).



Gruppenausstellung / Group Show, Studio 1, 2 und 4,
September 29th – October 29th 2006,
Opening: Thursday, 28. September 2006, 19 h

Further exhibition sites: Museum of American Art – MoAA (permanent collection), Frankfurter Allee 91, Berlin-Friedrichshain, opening hours: Wed-Sun 2-7 pm. Galerie 35 (Piet Mondrian, Recent Paintings, 1963-1996), Simon-Dach-Str. 35, Berlin-Friedrichshain, opening hours: Thu-Sun 3-8 pm (Opening: Sat, September 30th, 2006, 8 pm)

This year the Künstlerhaus Bethanien is represented once again at the ART FORUM BERLIN, where it will inform the international public about its work.
As always, the latest information from the Künstlerhaus and current publications will be available at stand 134 in the Palais am Funkturm, as well as an opportunity to see short video contributions by participants of the International Studio Programme in the next twelve months.

This year the Korean fellowship-holder Yunho Kim is appearing at the fair stand, where he will present an original and ironic model of interpretation for a career in art.


11. Art Forum Berlin - Internationale Messe für Gegenwartskunst, Stand 134/Palais am Funkturm, Messegelände Berlin, Eingang/Entrance 19 Masurenallee, Berlin-Charlottenburg,
September 30th – October 4th 2006,
Opening: Friday, 29. September 2006, 16 h