We live in uncertain times: a pandemic, the climate crisis and numerous conflicts. While these environmental and socio-political issues require constructive thinking, it is the opposite – destruction – that can really give rise to healing, as the Ende Neu exhibition at Kindl demonstrates. This latest group exhibition brings together eight international artists whose works feature both collapse and regrowth. Glance at Katja Aufleger’s work and you see what look like perfume bottles. Look again and you’ll see aesthetically staged Molotov cocktails. Working in the best tradition of Italian Baroque, Nicola Samorì creates meticulous oil portraits before brutally rendering their faces unrecognizable. Meanwhile Michael Sailstorfer’s sculpture of a human hand – created especially for “Ende Neu” – is attached to a pneumatic drill and appears to be trying to poke a finger through the gallery wall. In all the works, you feel a sense of creative tension – that point at which destruction and invention coincide. Incidentally, the exhibition’s title is an allusion to the song of the same name by Einstürzender Neubauten, a Berlin industrial band famed for their on-stage destruction. It’s a fitting title for a show that explores the end of the world with so much irreverence.
Text: Hanna Komornitzyk / Photos: Jens Ziehe / Credit: Bastian Hoffmann, Michael Sailstorfer, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2021
Kindl – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Am Sudhaus 3, 12053 Berlin–Neukölln; map
Wed 12–20h, Thu–Sun 12–18h; 24.12. & 25.12. closed
Ende Neu runs until 06.02.2022
@kindlberlin
