Himmel unter Berlin, a temporary group show of ten international artists, was built into an underground catacomb system soon to be destroyed and giving way, most likely, to luxury housing. The central Berlin address isn’t public — I can’t stress enough how stringently we preview attendees were reminded not to share it — but from the exterior, the site looks like an aging brick warehouse. Inside, a narrow hall with no visible end leads to an ersatz, red-lit bar, on the other side of which a black-masked woman opens a small wooden door. Ah, here’s the art.
The exhibition title is presumably a twist on the 1987 Wim Wenders film, Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), in which immortal angels live among humans, listen to their thoughts, fall in love, tire of immortality, and shed their angel status to experience humanity’s most basic pleasures, like taste and touch. Himmel unter Berlin satiates the senses while pointing out the consequences of overindulging in such pleasures.
Gentle, atmospheric electronic music plays throughout the cavernous hallway, which leads to the show’s 14 installations. Guests experience a peculiar disorientation within the exhibition as they stumble from one large-scale pulsing, flashing, chiming, blinking installation to another.
The 14 works vary in their message. Some address joy, like the beautiful suspended sculpture, Fire Flies, by the creative studio kling klang klong. Fire Flies conjures up summer nights at the edge of the woods; the piece calmly mimics the synchronized lights of a gentle firefly swarm.
Next door, an oversized egg ticks like a time bomb. It crackles with sound but fails to hatch, while a doom-filled roar sounds overhead. A knocking sound precedes the question: Hello, is this finally the end? Behind the sculpture, The Egg, a digital tracker displays the Earth’s current population. The artist, Marco Barotti, connects the data tracker with space’s sound, for a disturbing auditory-visual effect, ramping up anxiety around the population count nearing eight billion.
Margareta Hesse’s installation, Lichtfallen (Light Traps), features a room fully booby-trapped with red lasers. Hesse’s work may imply that beauty is not necessarily devoid of threat.
Just beyond, the installation Greenwashing, from Carocora and Sven Sauer, confronts the ongoing problems of corporate waste and environmental pollution. The installation includes balloon-filled, transparent dresses paired with gas masks. The artists express their joint disappointment in the corporate world’s trendiest lie: that they’re substantively engaged in eco-friendly practices for the benefit of the environment.
In a similar vein, Tom Kretschmer’s installation, Frassbilder (Feeding Patterns), employs visual typography to urge viewers to consider the deforestation in Borneo, Indonesia, due to our demand for palm oil-filled sweets. All of the show’s work is installed in the catacomb’s cracked and broken rooms. However, the destroyed space greatly contributes to Kretschmer’s message.
Himmel unter Berlin ends with Leigh Sachwitz’s installation, INSIDEOUT, a transparent house containing a credibly immersive storm, followed by sunrise. In a quiet moment, the suggested walls are bespeckled with evening fireflies.
From March 23rd to April 10th, Himmel unter Berlin offers their exclusive guests, 199 invitees per evening, an experience filled with amazement, color, delight, knowledge, torment, and worst of all, the immutable limit of being human.
Cover Image by Susannah Edelbaum
Written March 2022
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