Sporting a long bushy beard, Julius von Bismarck says there is “no way to avoid dealing with the name”. He means his own and that of Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of the German Empire and great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle of the artist. ” It’s everywhere ; entire landscapes, seas and 12 streets of Berlin bear this name.
by Bismarck When platitudes become form is on view until August 14 at the Berlinische Galerie, which reopens today after four months of closure to renew its lighting. The museum’s new exhibitions are dominated by the theme of man’s relationship to the environment; the art on display includes a life-size (but not realistic) moving giraffe, several stuffed animals, and a spaceship shaped like a lotus flower.
Nasan Tower, Shadow (2023) © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
No less than five new exhibitions: alongside the Bismarck exhibition, that of Nasan Tur chase is on view until April 1, 2024; a show about building in 1970s Berlin called Suddenly wonderful runs until September 18; The sweet certainty by the duo Matthias Böhler and Christian Orendt until August 23, and the video work by Pinar Ogrenci the avalanche visible until July 31.
A still from the film by Pınar Öğrenci As is (2022) © Pinar Öğrenci
Bismarck shows his chancellor ancestor on horseback, as depicted in a statue in Bremen. Next to him is the giraffe, also on a pedestal. This is a giant, poseable model of a children’s toy – the type with a round base that, when pressed, makes the creature move in unnatural spasms and folds up. Bismarck and his horse also jerk off precariously on their pedestal, seemingly on the verge of collapse.
The name is a common thread in Bismarck’s exhibition. Another great facility, I like flowers, features a room filled with giant pressed palms hanging from the ceiling, including a species from Madagascar known as the Bismarck palm. In their ornamental, one-dimensional beauty, the trees give the illusion of fragility (they are actually mounted on steel). An abstract painting on a nine meter by 12 meter fabric showing bands of movement on the surface of the Bismarck Sea gently rises from the ceiling. A photograph shows the fabric floating on the waves off Papua New Guinea.
Julius of Bismarck, I like flowers (Strelitzia Nicolai2017) Courtesy of Julius von Bismarck; alexander levy, Berlin, and Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf, © Julius von Bismarck, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Tur’s work explores people who kill animals for sport. In a video, they anonymously answer the artist’s unbiased questions about how and why they hunt, and what emotions they feel when shooting an animal. Spread out in another large gallery, four stuffed animals – a fox, a deer, a boar and a raptor – lie unceremoniously on the ground at the visitors’ feet. Unlike the realistic poses of traditional taxidermy, they are depicted as corpses, eliciting the same mixture of revulsion and grief as dead animals seen on the side of the road.
A huge and complex installation by Böhler & Arendt shows a giant ape-like figure reclining in a fetal position while teams of tiny men race around with ladders, digging equipment and wagons on rails to exploit the resources that he offers. In a second room, their Lotus Flower 2020 spaceship features The sweet certainty of deliverance from the darkness that surrounds us.
The Berlinische Galerie has purchased nine images displayed inside the spaceship that depict this magical deliverance for its own collection.
