Notes from exhibitions, museums and concerts
Grace Weaver, "Parataxis", at Soy Capitán: two figures at a table, left, and a figure holding an amphora, right. Photo: Florian Jäger, 13 September 2026
Published on September 13, 2026
At Soy Capitán, Grace Weaver builds one stage from a lamp, an amphora and a striped wall, and puts a different figure on it each time. "Parataxis" works because of that repetition, which turns everyday life into ritual.
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Paweł Książek, "Rhizome", at Persons Projects: the hang around the corner, from the hair painting to the flame and the candle. Photo: Florian Jäger, 13 September 2026
Published on September 13, 2026
At Persons Projects the same eye motif appears as a painting, a drawing and a red fragment of a face. Hair, flame and water in "Rhizome" share no subject, only the lack of a fixed outline, and the hang turns that into a method.
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Vladimir Sorokin, "Morning After the Blizzard No. 2", 2026, beside sheets from the "Pushkin, help me!" series at Taiga Gallery. Photo: Florian Jäger, 13 September 2026
Published on September 13, 2026
At Taiga Gallery, Sorokin's large canvases tell the story of "Der Schneesturm" while the small sheets call on Pushkin. Two series, same size, same technique, and on some sheets "help me" has been overwritten with "save us".
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"TRACE METALS" at galerie burster: the view through to the second room, with the concrete block in front. Photo: Florian Jäger, 13 September 2026
Published on September 13, 2026
Perforated metal, concrete, foil and glazed ceramic: at galerie burster, eight artists show surfaces that might have peeled off city facades. Strong on material, but palette and method are so uniform that eight names barely add up to eight voices in the room.
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Relief paintings and figurative canvases in the corridor at "BEL ÉTAGE", BACKSPACE. Photo: Florian Jäger, 13 September 2026
Published on September 13, 2026
Three galleries and nine names shared a hall in a light-industrial yard for three days. "BEL ÉTAGE" at BACKSPACE was more sampler than argument, and at its best where the works mocked the business that hung them.
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Izabella Gustowska, "Home’s Shadows", at KVOST: video projected onto an oval table, with a light box beyond. Photo: Florian Jäger, 13 September 2026
Published on September 13, 2026
At KVOST, Izabella Gustowska projects archive footage onto an antique oval table and mounts seaside snapshots on pointed ovals. The new work is dense and exact, and the earlier pieces the handout also lists recede behind it.
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The first stop: a converted floor with a masonry pillar and ribbed ceiling, Berlin Art Week. Photo: Florian Jäger, 13 September 2026
Published on September 13, 2026
Three rooms on Lindenstraße, Rudi-Dutschke-Straße and Leipziger Straße were among the more interesting on the last day of Berlin Art Week. The first gives the most, because mirrors, glass and a window's shadow all work together.
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Installation view: round single-colour panels in the two-storey hall at Konrad Fischer Galerie, a halved disc behind the gallery railing. Photo: Florian Jäger, 13 September 2026
Published on September 13, 2026
Konrad Fischer Galerie shows Martin Margiela and Alan Charlton in a building with green steel stairs and a Bewag high-voltage sign. The hall, where round panels and architecture come together, is the strongest part. The rest is spread across side rooms, an office and a landing.
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Rebecca Brodskis, "The Last Ones Awake", in the Vault at St. Agnes: three canvases of stacked heads on the long wall. Photo: Florian Jäger, 12 September 2026
Published on September 12, 2026
In the Vault at St. Agnes, Rebecca Brodskis shows paintings of close friends from her Berlin years. The heads almost touch, yet no gaze meets another, and that is what makes the series work.
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Christian Achenbach, "ECHOTROPIA", installation view in the nave of St. Agnes, KÖNIG GALERIE, with the wide pink-skied canvas on the end wall. Photo: Florian Jäger, 12 September 2026
Published on September 12, 2026
Christian Achenbach's densely outlined landscapes and interiors hang against rough render in the tall hall of St. Agnes at KÖNIG GALERIE. The room makes the paintings look stronger. The interiors are the best of them, where a vase and an orange stay objects while everything around them turns to pattern.
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The main hall of the Wilhelm Hallen during HALLEN 07, with a neon drawing on a pole with a base plate in front and the inflatable figure behind. Photo: Florian Jäger, 11 September 2026
Published on September 11, 2026
HALLEN 07 puts more than 50 artists into a former iron foundry in Reinickendorf. The building is louder than most of what hangs in it, and only a handful of works stand up to it.
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Football robot at RoboCup in Messe Berlin, with children and adults along the barrier. Photo: Dominik Tryba, Introduce Productions, for IFA Berlin
Published on September 7, 2026
At IFA 2026 in Berlin, AI is printed on everything from glasses to detergent dosing. The robots are shown off as tricks and pets while the robot vacuum does the work. There is no stand for the real shift.
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The hand-drawn poster for the screening: two cattle in outline, "Watch Niu Lai at Tennis Bar", 20h, FR€€. Poster: @tennisbarberlin / @topdogbigboy
Published on September 2, 2026
At Tennis Bar in Neukölln, "Niu Lai" plays as a YouTube stream, complete with window bar, Chinese screening licence and the wrong aspect ratio. For a film two people built over five years in an architecture program, that is the most honest format going, and the place is full.
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The glass pavilions with their wavy facade beneath the rectangular grid of the retained steel structure from the former works hall. Photo: Supanut Arunoprayote, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
Published on August 26, 2026
In Shanghai's Expo Culture Park, three glass houses stand inside the truss of an old steelworks hall. The clash of old and new geometry does the building good, and makes it more honest than the artificial hill next door.
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The Shanghai Museum's East Building on Century Avenue: the north entrance, with the name in gold calligraphy. Photo: Florian Jäger, 26 August 2026
Published on August 26, 2026
The Shanghai Museum's new building in Pudong sorts millennia of Chinese art neatly by genre. Its finest moment is the roof terrace, where the city from an 1871 map in the galleries has no visible end.
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The former China Pavilion of Expo 2010, now the China Art Museum. The red, stepped building is wider at the top than at the bottom. Photo: Florian Jäger, 26 August 2026
Published on August 26, 2026
China's Expo 2010 pavilion is now an art museum too big for what it shows. Go anyway, for a 2024 painting by Xie Wenjin that is more precise than the entire building.
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The historic Troop Carrier propeller plane behind crowd barriers on the apron at Tempelhof. Photo: Florian Jäger, 22 August 2026
Published on August 22, 2026
The first TFELD, on the apron at Tempelhof, builds its Berlin out of replicas, from the Watergate club to the Kreuzberg lettering. The site handles that with ease, but the festival has yet to find a face of its own.
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The Copernicus Science Centre on the Vistula in Warsaw, with signs on the wall pointing to the centre and the planetarium. Photo: Adrian Grycuk, CC BY-SA 3.0 PL, via Wikimedia Commons
Published on May 24, 2026
At Warsaw's Copernicus Science Centre the mirror is not a motif but an experiment you walk through. Oskar Zięta's steel objects, added for Warsaw, take the show over the line into art.
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Lina Lapelytė. We Make Years Out of Hours, installation view Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, 2026 © Lina Lapelytė. VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026. Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Laura Fiorio
Published on May 1, 2026
At Hamburger Bahnhof, singing performers rebuild 400,000 wooden cubes. Lina Lapelytė's CHANEL Commission is a smart answer to a huge hall, though any one visit catches only one day's version.
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Applause in the Großer Saal of the Konzerthaus Berlin, beneath the chandeliers and in front of the organ
Published on February 14, 2026
The opening concert of VOM ANFANGEN at the Konzerthaus Berlin set Mahler's Fourth beside new pieces by Cymin Samawatie, played by three ensembles. Neither was translated into the other, and one premiere lasted about as long as Mahler.
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"Mujer ángel" ("Angel Woman"), Sonoran Desert, 1979 © Graciela Iturbide
Published on February 11, 2026
C/O Berlin hung Graciela Iturbide's first major Berlin retrospective series by series, the right call for a photographer who keeps going back. The contact sheets gave most away.
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Amerika Haus in Berlin-Charlottenburg, home of C/O Berlin since 2014. Photo: Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Published on January 23, 2026
At C/O Berlin's 25th anniversary, 12 Magnum photographers put Robert Capa's line to the test, several asking who controls a picture. The After Nature Prize laureates went further, towards perception that isn't human.
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The Gothic courtyard of the Palau dels Cervelló on Carrer de Montcada, now home to the Moco Museum Barcelona. Photo: Josep Renalias, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Published on August 1, 2025
At the Moco Museum Barcelona, Guillermo Lorca's six old-master-style paintings were more interesting than the famous names in the collection. They need time, and the place does little to make anyone take it.
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Two anthropomorphic pitchers in the ceramics case at the Museu Picasso on Carrer de Montcada. Photo: Florian Jäger, 1 August 2025
Published on August 1, 2025
Barcelona's Museu Picasso is about Picasso's beginnings rather than his fame, and more interesting for it than the greatest-hits museums. In one display case stand the 41 ceramics Jacqueline Roque gave the city in 1982.
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