The exhibition Scorpio’s Garden is a subjective snapshot of the current Berlin art scene, bringing together works and performances of more than 30 international artists. With Scorpio’s Garden, the artist Kirstine Roepstorff (*1972) metaphorically interprets Berlin as a garden, thus highlighting the city’s role as a platform for intellectual exchange and artistic production – a place where images, ideas and concepts find a favorable medium in which to grow, proliferate and compete with each other. The works selected for
Scorpio’s Garden take up motifs of development and growth, decline and decadence, control, spontaneity and sexuality. They reflect the dynamic competition distinguishing the art scene in this city, which is still making an effort to work its way out of the ruins of a traumatic century.
Neither a retrospective nor an outlook, the exhibition reflects Berlin’s continuing appeal to artists from all over the world and their activities in this city. Its official birthday (the first mention of the city in a document is Oct, 28, 1237), as well as the day on which the Berlin Wall came down (Nov. 9, 1989), fall under the sign of Scorpio, which in the year’s cycle of growth and decay stands for destruction, disintegration and dissolution, and thus, at the same time, for providing the potential for renewal.
Works by
Monica Bonvicini | Enrico David | Jason Dodge | Elmgreen & Dragset | Isa Genzken | Julian Göthe | Karl Holmqvist | Alexandra Hopf | Judith Hopf | Laura Horelli | Anna-Kavata Mbiti | Shahryar Nashat | Henrik Olesen | Kirsten Pieroth | Lotte Reiniger | Dean Sameshima | Dash Snow | Josef Strau | Suzanne Treister | Susanne Winterling | Amelie von Wulffen
Performances & Lectures by
Nevin Aladag | assume vivid astro focus | Gerry Bibby | Juliette Blightman | Kerstin Cmelka | Simon Fujiwara & Tim Davies | Karl Holmqvist | Judith Hopf | Fiona James | Sergey Karamyshev | Douglas Kløvedal | Warren Neidich | Gustav Opland | Yorgos Sapountzis | Egill Sæbjörnsson & Marcia Moraes | Elvis Schlaegel
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The second year of the Temporäre Kunshalle (2008-2010) was extremely interesting:
In the second year committed artists were invited to curate group shows. The aim was not only to present the perspectives of insiders addressing their own local artistic context, but to grasp and employ the Kunsthalle itself as an extension of artistic processes. In the exhibitions by Kirstine Roepstorff (Scorpio’s Garden), Karin Sander (Zeigen. An Audio Tour through Berlin), Phil Collins (Auto-Kino!), Tilo Schulz (squatting. erinnern, vergessen, besetzen), and John Bock (FischGrätenMelkStand), the artist-curators newly interpreted the medium of exhibition as an artwork and conceived approaches to question the complex relations between artwork, institution, exhibition space, and viewer in a direct debate with the invited artists, their ideas and networks. The spatial possibilities of the large exhibition hall proved to be advantageous, forcing the artist-curators to seek new and often surprising paths and combine what appeared incompatible.
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