Vito Acconci, Project for Railway Center East, Basel, at Klosterfelde Gallery Lorna Simpson, The Bed, At Gallery Wohnmaschine. Lorna Simpson's Fire Escape, 1995 Gabriele Basch's "Pop Mix/Volume I" at the Neu Berliner Kunstverein. Claudia Hart, Still from Face Dancing, 1996 From Hart's A Child's Machiavelli. Claudia Hart, Eat Me, 1996 at the Neu Berliner Kunstverein Hendrik Silbermann at Gallery Refugium. Hendrik Silbermann, at Gallery Refugium Micha Brendel's installation at Galerie/Edition Lutz Fiebig. Paco Knoller at Franck & Schutte. Jorge Pardo, Vivienne, at Neugerriemschnider. "Picasso and his Time" at the Westlicher Stuler Bau Lovis Corinth, The Blinded Samson, 1912, Oil. Collection Nationalgalerie Berlin.

berlin art diary: mitte mania by Mary E. Goldman The contrast between the sweltering New York heat during the Soho Arts Festival and the arctic chill in Berlin the very next week was a rude awakening to the onset of the notorious Berlin winter. In the galleries, too, things looked very seasonal, with the usual emphasis on American art imports. Berlin's hot new gallery district is located in the former East Berlin, in a section called Mitte (meaning middle), which is in the throes of major construction designed to make it the new heart of city. Many of the new spaces are West German galleries who have either migrated or created new branches in the area. While snaking my way through scaffolding and rubble en route to a Vito Acconci opening at Klosterfelde Gallery (Martin Klosterfelde is the enterprising son of Hamburg gallerist Maria Helga Klosterfelde), I was drawn to the glow of Matt Mullican's light boxes on view at the Projektraum Berlin (a gallery whose owners, Mathias Kampl and Andreas Binder, are from Munich). Mullican's images of rippling water and rave-like psychedelic patterns set up complementary visual rhythms. The Acconci show consisted of architectural models of recent public projects and proposals. Acconci peopled his model for the Railway Center East in Basel with strange toy urbanites, giving it the effect of a high-rise doll house. Also imported was Lorna Simpson's small show of lonely urban and hotel-themed black-and-white photographic silk-screens on felt, at Friedrich Loock's Galerie Wohnmaschine. Loock is a native East Berliner who started this Wohnmaschine illegally (pre- unification) by transforming his apartment into an underground gallery. The Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, one of the more sizable and impressive exhibition spaces in the area, had a group show, "Pop Mix/Volume I," curated by Kathrin Becker, with Thomas Hauser, German artist Gabriele Basch and the American artist Claudia Hart, whose borderline maniacal Face Dancing video was a highlight of the show. Hart, who has been living in Berlin for the past four years, also painted a large-scale pink mural in the style of the illustrations for her first pocket-sized artist's book, A Child's Machiavelli, the sequel of which, Dr. Faustie's Guide to Real Estate Development, was just released. Both books are skillful and precocious adaptations that bundle cut- throat morality, i.e., "If somebody's got to hate you make sure it's a bunch of weaklings with no money," in a cuddly cloak of storybook illustrations and characters. Berlin is a hard-core party town, luckily for me, since after dragging myself through torn-up streets all day I find an evening cocktail can be critical. The other night, the art-world heavies crowded in for the opening of the new location for Neu Gallery, run by Alexander Schröder and Thilo Wermke. They were exhibiting works by Daniel Pflumm and Andreas Slominsky, but it was so smoky that I couldn't see a thing. The evening ended at Panasonic, the club for the tragically hip, to which we dragged the newly arrived Steven Prina, who is in Berlin until December doing an artist's residency at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien. Not all the galleries I hit in Mitte had an American agenda. Galerie Refugium was exhibiting mixed-medium boxes by Dresden- born artist Hendrik Silbermann. His assemblages evoke religious reliquaries as well as the work of Cornell and Duchamp, but they still read fresh in his choice of objects and display. Stepping around the corner for a much needed dose of caffeine, I spied a new addition to the neighborhood, Galerie/Edition Lutz Fiebig, which had the work of another Dresden-born artist, Micha Brendel. The space was filled with the stretched skin, organized bones and pickled organs of animals, a la Damien Hirst, but I was quickly assured that Brendel was doing his thing long before Hirst floated his first cow. Leaving the still bullet-hole-scarred Mitte and going west to the glossier, swanker gallery scene in Charlottenberg was like traveling to another city altogether. One of the more influential and elegant galleries in the area, Franck & Schulte, was showing the German artists Paco Knöller and Hanns Schimansky, friends whose work shares a distinct visual language. Knöller's paintings have more figurative references than Schimansky's drawings. A few blocks away at the more funky Neugerriemschnider gallery (Tim Neuger is the protege of gallery giant Max Hetzler) were three massive paintings by L.A. artist Jorge Pardo. Pardo floats vibrant amorphic shapes on neutral unprimed canvases, which visually expand the intimate scale of the gallery space. On the museum front, there is a lot of excitement over Heinz Berggruen's famous Pablo Picasso collection, on loan to the city for the next 10 years. The exhibition, "Picasso and his Time: The Berggruen Collection," opened on Sept. 5 at the Westlicher Stüler Bau, one of the buildings in the Charlottenberg Schloss Museum quarter (displacing an impressive antiquities collection to storage). The 113-piece exhibition, curated by Hans Jürgen Papies, includes 64 Picasso paintings, sculptures and works on paper, as well as impressive pieces by van Gogh, Cezanne, Braque, Giacometti, Laurent and Klee. Berggruen amassed his fortune as an art dealer in Paris and had a friendship with Picasso that enabled him to assemble a strong and eclectic collection. Highlights include the sculpture,Absinthe Glass and a portrait of Dora Maar entitled Woman With a Yellow Sweater. The exhibition was not actually a gift to the city and there is suspicion that after its 10-year run, the sons of Berggruen, who both have galleries in the U.S., might have other ideas of its fate. Another notable show was the comprehensive retrospective of Lovis Corinth on view at the Altes Museum, Aug. 2-Oct. 20, 1996. Corinth is often classified as one of the forerunners of German Impressionism, but the exhibition testified to the diversity of his work. His broad spectrum of painting styles ranged from a conservative, academic approach in his formative years to a more gestural and expressionistic style in his mature work. On the other end of the spectrum was a contemporary group show entitled "Family, Nation, Tribe, Community: Shift" at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Curator Frank Wagner based his theme on lifestyles that deviate from the mainstream either by personal choice or political and economic constrictions, and included some new works by Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Wolfgang Tillmans, Bettina Allamoda, Mike Kelly and a sexy, mesmerizing video by the Italian duo Lovett/Codagnone. I've also heard that there is a Salvador Dali show up at the Schloss Charlottenberg that shouldn't be missed, but that's going to have to wait. I am busy as can be helping newlyweds Bruno Brunnet and Nicole Hackert move their Contemporary Fine Arts Gallery from Charlottenberg into a new space in Mitte. They will open next week with British artist Sarah Lucas. Perhaps the biggest news this month is that Berlin is hosting it's first international art fair, "European Art Forum," Oct. 31- Nov. 4, 1996, with 130 galleries participating (conspicuously, only 14 from Berlin will be represented). The fair is by invite only, so Mitte gallerist Ruppert Goldsworthy is organizing an un-fair that will include many of those who were not on the organizer's priority list, and are incidentally some of the more innovative galleries in the city. In a kind of double whammy, the same week a huge Museum for Contemporary Art opens in the railway station building of the Hamburger Bahnhof. The long-awaited project opens its doors Nov. 3 and will house the collection of Erich Marx as well as the contemporary collection from the National Gallery. All this activity just two weeks before the Cologne Art Fair, Nov. 7-11, 1996, looks like a little spotlight stealing to me. Berlin has high hopes to become the next cultural center in Europe and the upcoming weeks of blockbuster events should prove an interesting step in the right direction. I will be working with Regen Projects from L.A. during the Berlin art fair and I can't wait to get the inside dirt. The city will be bustling, so check back in a few weeks and I'll let you know if it was all a great success or just ambitious delusions of grandeur. MARY E. GOLDMAN is an American critic and curator who works at Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin.