People gather on the curb at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Everyone is excited, everyone is buoyant, everyone is delighted. The reason? There’s a new gallery in the city. It’s called Gegen & Lücke and exhibits young art in the middle of Mitte. The company behind it is Culterim, which has been renting out vacant properties to artists as studios and exhibition spaces for several years. They now also offer residencies and a course program. The gallery is the latest addition. Profits go to the artists and back to the company to cross-finance. The gallery is managed by Merwin Lüdicke (probably the only salaried gallery owner in Berlin). The represented artists are Anna Zachariades, Björn Heyn, Elisa Breyer, Esther Grüne, Fabian Hub, Kevin Lüdicke and Lars Fischer. The latter is now being exhibited in his first solo show following the successful debut group exhibition. Fischer paints colorful apocalypses on printed PVC, framed in self-welded steel frames. Tube-like worms and worm-like pipes wind their way into mountains, bodies and factories. They are indefinable representatives of dystopia, a central theme in his art. Do you see nature? is the exhibition’s title, and alongside his typical mixed technique of printed photo collages and paintings, Fischer also shows smaller, dark black works for the first time, a hybrid of print and drawing that fittingly resemble burnt paper. The fact that a new gallery is opening at a time of reduced cultural funding, cautious art purchases, and constant artistic existential angst, only to show an exhibition in which everything revolves around catastrophes, is a beautiful irony — and a good reason to pay a visit to Mitte again.
Text: Inga Krumme / Photos: Jannis Uffrecht
Gegen & Lücke, Rosa-Luxemburg-Str.35, 10178 Berlin–Mitte; map
Do you see nature? by Lars Fischer 04.–26.04.2025
@gegenundluecke
@lf_larsfischer
