Where the Place Begins

Where the Place Begins

Neue Berliner Räume

Kunsthaus Dahlem. Photo: Robert Conrad.
April 27, 2015

April–June 2015

Neue Berliner Räume
at Kunsthaus Dahlem
Käuzchensteig 8-12
14195 Berlin

neueberlinerraeume.de

Contributions by
Vajiko Chachkhiani, Amir Fattal, Sonja Hornung, Lynne Marsh, Alessandro Rauschmann, Sonya Schönberger, Dan Stockholm, Lukas Töpfer, and Gernot Wieland.

Neue Berliner Räume is pleased to announce a curatorial guest program at Kunsthaus Dahlem that will unfold over a period of several weeks in spring, 2015. In the lead-up to the institution’s inauguration, a selection of positions by international artists and curators will bring attention to the singular historical dimension of the place, as well as its present and future undertakings. The program endeavours to open out the place along these lines of inquiry. Through this, each individual contribution demarcates—bit by bit—a possible direction.

In mid-1939, construction work began in the Berlin region of Dahlem on a spacious studio complex for sculptor Arno Breker. In previous years, Breker had taken on significant public commissions for the National Socialist regime. The representative state studio on the edge of Grunewald Forest marked his definitive rise as one of the most influential artists of the “Third Reich.” From 1942, the expansive building, with its carefully orchestrated and politically charged architecture, was ready for use. It was here that the monumental sculptures for the fundamental transformation of Berlin into “Germania” were to be produced by Breker. However, despite the substantial completion of the premises, Breker would use them only rarely. At the end of the war in 1945, work stored onsite was confiscated and the studio closed.

Not long after the end of World War Two, the building was reopened as a set of artists’ studios. Over the following decades it was to be used as a living and working space for artists such as Ouhi Cha, Jimmie Durham, Dorothy Iannone and Bernhard Heiliger—a student of Arno Breker—who worked onsite in Dahlem from 1949 through to his death in 1995. The closure of the studio program by the city of Berlin in 2011 represents the end of an important chapter in the building’s history.

This year, after considerable discussion, a re-dedication of the historic site will take place with the inauguration of Kunsthaus Dahlem. Following a renovation process undertaken in accordance with heritage-listing guidelines, the exhibition space will now devote itself towards developments in the post-war Modernist art of East and West Germany. Accompanying Kunsthaus Dahlem in the final weeks before its official opening, Neue Berliner Räume’s guest program will extend into the institution’s first exhibition in summer, 2015.

Where the Place Begins marks one of the first occasions that the space will be open to the public. Individual contributions will take shape both onsite and through alternative formats.

Each contribution of the program indicates a point from which the place begins.

Curated by: Valerie Senden and Manuel Wischnewski
Curatorial assistance: Sylvia Sadzinski and Aap Tepper

Program information

From April 27
Comfortable, in Spite of the Comfort
Sonja Hornung

May 8
André & Arno
Sonya Schönberger

May 11
Die Zukunft hat Zeit
curated by Lukas Töpfer

May 23
Stone is Laid on Stone
with contributions by Vajiko Chachkhiani, Amir Fattal, Lynne Marsh, Alessandro Rauschmann, Sonya Schönberger, Sonja Hornung, Dan Stockholm, Lukas Töpfer, and Gernot Wieland

The program for June 2015 will be announced shortly.

Press contact & further information
T +49(0)1623144791 / press [​at​] neueberlinerraeume.de

www.neueberlinerraeume.de
www.kunsthaus-dahlem.de

The program is kindly funded by the Kulturamt Steglitz-Zehlendorf and the Bezirkskulturfonds Berlin.

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