212,500 visitors

01/09/2010

PRESS RELEASE

The Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin was never an exhibition venue intended for eternity; from the onset, it was planned to operate for the period of two years. From September 2008 through August 2010, it stood at Schlossplatz in the center of Berlin, between Alexanderplatz and Brandenburg Gate, in the immediate vicinity of the Museum Island. A building as pragmatic as it was provisional, a cube with a height of eleven meters, containing an exhibition space measuring 20 x 30 meters, as well as two annexes for the Book Shop and the Café. During this period, a total of 17 shows and more than 150 accompanying events took place: lectures, discussions, readings, performances, film screenings, and concerts, as well as the Montags Bar featuring artist-DJs. The exhibitions were supplemented by an education program as well as elaborately designed publications and editions by the participating artists.

During the total of 467 exhibition days, more than 212,500 visitors viewed the artistic contributions of more than 800 artists, almost all of whom live in Berlin.
With the façade projects conceived for the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin by Gerwald Rockenschaub, Bettina Pousttchi, and Carsten Nicolai, the building was moreover transformed into an artwork in public space, visible to all and offering the artists the opportunity to prominently position their artistic statements and critically reflect on the treatment of urban space.

The exhibition program in the interior space was divided into two complementary parts. In the first year, outstanding artistic positions and important current discourses in contemporary art were exemplarily staked out by the shows of Candice Breitz, Simon Starling, Katharina Grosse, and Allora & Calzadilla. Curated by members of the Artistic Board of the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, these four exhibitions offered an outside view of Berlins artistic landscape and its media diversity. The program was rounded off by five cabinet exhibitions in the specially installed project space.

The concept for the second year was developed by Angela Rosenberg. Committed artists were invited to curate group shows. The aim was not only to present the perspectives of insiders addressing their own local artistic context, but to grasp and employ the Kunsthalle itself as an extension of artistic processes. In the exhibitions by Kirstine Roepstorff (Scorpio’s Garden), Karin Sander (Zeigen. An Audio Tour through Berlin), Phil Collins (Auto-Kino!), Tilo Schulz (squatting. erinnern, vergessen, besetzen), and John Bock (FischGrätenMelkStand), the artist-curators newly interpreted the medium of exhibition as an artwork and conceived approaches to question the complex relations between artwork, institution, exhibition space, and viewer in a direct debate with the invited artists, their ideas and networks. The spatial possibilities of the large exhibition hall proved to be advantageous, forcing the artist-curators to seek new and often surprising paths and combine what appeared incompatible.

Hence, the Kunsthalle, if only for a short period of time, became a unique location spanning the art scene and its diverse networks, testing in laboratory-like postulates an intensive, practice-oriented exchange between local artists, offering the audience a unique and direct experience of contemporary art.