Sandwiched between Art Cologne, Art Brussels, and Frieze Week New York, Berlin Gallery Weekend is the dealer’s antidote to fair season. An initiative started by several local dealers 12 years ago, the annual event attempts to refocus attention on the strength of Berlin’s galleries and their unique spaces. During the course of the weekend, major European and international collectors descend on the historically avant-garde hub to see the best the natives have to offer. The event is by invite only, and the galleries that make it on to the official map benefit from a sharp influx of foot traffic. Here, a look at our top three shows. Eduardo Basulaldo at PSM GallerySometimes it’s the simple things that pack the biggest punch, as is the case with “Incisive,” Argentinean artist Eduardo Basulaldo’s second solo show at PSM. His hand-drawn grid draped over the gallery’s interior directly addresses two dominating yet almost invisible elements of architecture — the fence and the white cube. Both limiting in their functions, these components usually blend into the landscape, but thanks to the jagged, imperfect edges of Basulaldo’s handiwork, one begins to see them again as the boundaries that they are. The translucent paper shudders with each step, and it’s this silent echo that rattles the nerves. An ethereal jail constructed of basic materials, Basualdo’s site-specific installation demands a closer inspection of the restrictions we erect around art and ourselves. On opening night, the addition of a performer hidden behind the veil emphasized the binary structure created by a wall and its ability to disrupt human interaction.Rachel Harrison at Kraupa-Tuskany ZeidlerWork and play come together in strangely satisfying ways at Rachel Harrison’s solo show, “Depth Jump to Second Box,” at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler. The gallery, which operates out of a local corporate office building, provided an ideal setting for Harrison’s explorations of labor in an increasingly virtual world. Harrison transformed Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler’s main space, a former IBM server room, into a wonky fitness center by erecting a rudimentary gym complemented by engorged kettle bell. Left to stew under the fluorescents, Harrsion’s sculptures toy with the idea of physical labor and its relationship to aesthetics rather than progress. Down the hall, Harrison took over a functioning conference room where her formalist punchline is less concerned with exercise and more concerned with how outdated tools and spaces might be reused in the future. Stacking her misshapen sculptures around the table like alien delegates, the conference room becomes a place for objects rather than ideas to collide. The familiar detritus of productivity — earphones, Adderall, and paperclips — accessorize the works, inviting one to ponder what the afterlife of these tools will be.Hiwa K at KOWFor gallery weekend, KOW highlighted the work of two activist artists, Hiwa K and Tobias Zielony. The potent combination filled the brutalist space from top to bottom with Zielony spreading out on the basement level and Hiwa K taking the top two floors. Iraqi Musician and artist Hiwa K, who will be spotlighted at the upcoming Documenta, shared three pieces from his personal history, including his incendiary, documentary-style 2011 film, “This Lemon Tastes of Apple.” A reference to the smell of tear gas used during the Arab Spring, the video compiles footage from Hiwa K’s musical intervention during the last day of public protests in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan. Shot on the go, the film depicts Hiwa K and his partner, Daroon Othman, playing the movie score from “Once Upon a Time in the West,” while protesters march through the streets sucking on lemons to combat the taste of gas, engaging with a moment of history that was largely overlooked by the media. Screened on a TV overlooking the artist’s 2010 installation of instruments and stepladders titled “It’s Spring and the Weather is Great so Let’s Close All Object Matters,” the film locates itself somewhere between the sublimely theatrical and the crushingly real.
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