Pausing to hear the sounds: eight must-see exhibitions in Germany

Summertime in Germany often means drinking on the steaming hot pavement outside a gallery’s private view – sometimes well into the night, depending on the crowd. From big-name solo shows and trendy group shows to the long-awaited reopening of one of Berlin’s key art institutions, there is a plethora of works on view in Berlin, Munich, and Dusseldorf through July and August. Here are eight exhibitions and events worth visiting.

Judith Hopf, ‘Rest’
Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Through August 7, 2021

Not only do the sculptural materials of clay and wood take playful form in Judith Hopf’s latest exhibition at Deborah Schamoni, she also highlights the pliability of language: The title of the show, ‘Rest’, means ‘remaining’ or ‘leftovers’in German and ‘pause’ in English. Giant apple peels made of wood are coiled on the floor, lying next to figures made from thick textured clay (Phone User 4 and 5, both 2021), who stand on puddle-like plinths, staring listlessly into their clay phones. Hopf produced these sculptures by hand, slowly molding clay from the feet up to the head. This juxtaposition suggests the importance of taking time, of just being, of ‘remaining’ still, rather than constantly scrolling.

Susan Philipsz, ‘Slow Fresh Fount’
Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin
Through August 22, 2021

The disused substation that is now Konrad Fischer Galerie’s Berlin space is currently filled with the dulcet tones of Turner Prize–winning artist Susan Philipsz. Sound emanates from organ pipes stacked like pick-up sticks on the ground floor, while four dark oil drums with a very particular echo emit an expansive sound into the first floor. Large white hanging silos occupy the second floor, which too have their own acoustic echo. Philipsz’s penetrating voice is based on a four-part madrigal (a vocal music composition from the Renaissance and early Baroque periods). It is inspired by a poem by Ben Jonson titled Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount, which has a mythological resonance, asking a fountain to keep time with salt tears. Philipsz uses only tones, not words, to create the feeling of space using echoes. At one point, the sounds from the silos and oil drums come together in a sort of call and response before they crescendo in resounding union.

Karl Holmqvist, ‘#SAVEYOURTEARS…’
Galerie Neu, Berlin
Through July 31, 2021

Sound fragments can also be heard in Galerie Neu’s exhibition of work by Karl Holmqvist. Taken from his captivation with written abstraction as shaped by language and numbers, sound installations and writings fill the gallery in varying forms and positions. ‘WE STARTED FROM THE BOTTOM / NOW WE’RE STILL DOWN HERE’, for example, is scrawled just above the floor on opposite sides of a doorway, a humorous wink at the demand for constant advancement necessitated by contemporary life. Interested in the legacies of found and concrete poetry, Holmqvist’s own publication of collected poetry has also been published on the occasion of this show, giving visitors a chance to delve further into the Swedish artist’s universe.

Natalie Ball, ‘Deer Woman gets enrolled on October 30, 2013’
Wentrup, Berlin
Through July 24, 2021

Natalie Ball conjures a figure that she describes as ‘Deer Woman’ in her exhibition at Wentrup, which also marks her first show in Germany. Perhaps part shaman and part avenger, Deer Woman is a shape-shifter, a spirit seducing and punishing impertinent men who disrespect femininity. As a Klamath/Modoc interdisciplinary artist based in Chiloquin, Oregon, Ball references her own application for enrollment in the Klamath Tribes in 2013. With works such as Gag Gun (2021), which includes a shotgun barrel made of deer rawhide, she asks questions about the nature of privilege, who is the rightful owner of lands and their resources, and what it even means to have a government ruling over such lands. The concept of the right to existence is conveyed using a highly symbolic and personal language that acknowledges Indigenous peoples and their histories.

‘The Youngest Day’
carlier | gebauer, Berlin
July 24 – September 8, 2021

Sometimes the places in which we live are simultaneously familiar and strange to us – an idea explored in the group exhibition curated by Mathew Hale at carlier | gebauer, specifically in relation to Hale’s relocation from Berlin to Los Angeles. Indeed, all of the 24 artists in the show also live in LA, at least part of the time. It could be seen as an ode to the city, described by Hale as ‘both ancient and youthful’. The show’s title, ‘The Youngest Day’, suggests the newness of moving to another place, of becoming the flaneur: moving freely and observing the urbanism all around. Aaron Fowler’s group of oil paintings, collectively titled LA Skies (2020), for example, depict the city’s changing heavens, ranging from azure blue and filled with clouds, to being illuminated at night, or pulsing with glowing sunsets. After all, even the ‘youngest day’ must too eventually grow old.

Ulrike Ottinger, ‘Journée d’un G.I.’
Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
July 22 – August 28, 2021

Although Ulrike Ottinger is known for her surrealist films (The New York Times even called her ‘a one-woman avant-garde opposition to the sulky male melodramas of Wenders, Fassbinder and Herzog’), ‘Journée d’un G.I.’ at Contemporary Fine Arts highlights work made in Paris in the 1960s before she focused on film. Influenced by everyday life, comics, photography, and the political landscape of the 1960s, her brightly colored figurative screenprints and paintings were part of La Figuration Narrative – the Paris contingency of Pop art – and sometimes pay homage to famous American pop references, as with Allen Ginsberg Puzzle (1966) wherein the beatnik poet is rendered as Uncle Sam. That said, the gallery will also transform into a temporary cinema, showing films that Ottinger made upon moving to Berlin in the 1970s, including Ticket of No Return (1979), Freak Orlando (1981), and Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984).

‘Sorting Things Out’
Galerie Max Mayer, Dusseldorf
July 22 – August 22, 2021

Curated by Magnus Schaefer, this group exhibition at Galerie Max Mayer considers the ways in which artists ‘sort things out’ – the way they use systems of classification and standardization in their work, and the impact this has on their symbolic or material resonance. Take, for example, Lucy Raven’s series of screen prints, ‘PR’ (2012–2014), which are based on calibration charts for film projectors: RP1 (2012) is a pattern of multicolored rectangles and squares that form a rainbow grid. Meanwhile, Carolyn Lazard’s video Crip Time (2018) shows the artist separating their weekly medications into yellow, white, green, and blue pillboxes; the piece is approximately 10 minutes long and was filmed in real time. Their work often explores their experience of chronic illness and, here, their hands seamlessly move from one box to the next, emphasizing the embodied flow of mundane everyday practices that are dictated by the labor of living with such a condition.

‘Mies In Mind’
Various galleries in Berlin
Begins August 20, 2021

‘Mies in Mind’ is an initiative organized by INDEX Berlin – a website that tells everyone what is happening in the city and when – and the Neue Nationalgalerie. It responds to and honors the long-awaited reopening of the museum in August, following David Chipperfield Architects’ restoration of the 1968 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe building. Galleries that are collectively celebrating what has been six years in the making include a long list of Berlin’s stalwart spaces, among them Galerie Buchholz, carlier | gebauer, ChertLüdde, Mehdi Chouakri, Galerie Eigen + Art, Klemm’s, König Galerie, neugerriemschneider, Esther Schipper, and Sprüth Magers. Be sure not to miss Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt at ChertLüdde, whose show also honors Paula Modersohn-Becker, a key figure in German art history between early Expressionism and the birth of Modernism.

To find out about additional events and exhibitions hosted by Art Basel galleries in Germany, visit our Events calendar.

Louisa Elderton is the Curatorial Editor at Gropius Bau, Project Editor of Phaidon's 'Vitamin' series, and an independent art critic contributing to Frieze, Artforum, and Flash Art, among other publications.

Top image: Ulrike Ottinger, Journée d'un G.I. (detail), 1967. Screenprint with nine panels. 155 x 155 cm. Courtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin. © Ulrike Ottinger.