BERLIN ART WEEK
The Drummer on the Hot Art Roof | By Niklas Maak
More than a hundred institutions have joined forces for this year’s ‘Berlin Art Week’. Painting takes centre stage in the galleries, whilst a sculpture by Oskar Matzerath stands on the Neue Nationalgalerie like an omen. (…)
Rediscoveries and Micro-Observations
Local galleries are also taking part in Art Week; what stands out is the interest in painting. Well worth a visit is Haverkampf Leistenschneider, which is showcasing the work of artist Janice Biala, who emigrated from Poland to New York and, after the Second World War, painted almost abstract colour-field-like spatial compositions in Morandi-esque, muted pastel colours, in which – much to the amazement of visitors from the world of figurative art – cups, apples and artichokes, and sometimes even people, appear.
Biala is one of the most exciting rediscoveries of this Art Week (prices ranging from 18,000 to 85,000 euros). She has had a major influence on Aubrey Levinthal, born in 1986, whose work is also on display at Haverkampf Leistenschneider; Levinthal often paints complex, mirrored interior worlds that can be interpreted as psychograms of states of mind and atmospheres. Levinthal is a master of micro-observation: one painting depicts, with an almost neurotic, magnificent attention to detail, the painter’s reflection in a bath; on the edge of the tub lies a hair tie, from which a few strands of hair have become caught whilst her plait was being undone; in another, dimly lit room, the white case for Earpods stands out almost painfully as an intruder from digital culture into the diffuse interior. In her paintings, Levinthal thus makes tangible and visible an elusive contemporary mood reflecting inner life in the digital modern age.”
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