A special coming together on the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, 2024 with The Fairest and Alien Athena Foundation for Art.
The evening highlight is a joint performance by artist Mauro Ventura (performed by Kianí del Valle) and opera singer Steve Katona, presented by The Fairest and Alien Athena Foundation for Art. A sensorial sound-bath experience offers an immersive and calming interlude amidst the non-stop nature of Gallery Weekend. This marks the first time that the two artistic positions come together:
"Two intertwined performances: mine and yours, which, through their interaction, create a new momentum"(Steve Katona).
The performance unfolds twice throughout the evening in two distinct rooms, activating the architecture within the vibrant space of Studio 11/11 on Potsdamer Straße.

Using the method of collage as a starting point, the interdisciplinary practice of Mauro Ventura evolves across painting, sculpture, installation and performance. Their investigation asserts itself on the research of ancient languages that study the occult, proposing a hyperreality or a parallel video-game like melting pot of syncretism.
These virtual realities indulge in ritualesque-like actions and ways of painting that question formats with the aim to transform social structures. Demons are a recurring motif in Ventura ́s practice, used as a means to explore the duality of things, invoking two opposite spheres of life and exploring the polarities of light and dark, visible and invisible, good and evil, presence and absence.

Kianí del Valle is a Berlin - Los Angeles based dancer, choreographer, director and performance curator originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Driven by anthropological, biological and sociological concepts, del Valle’s work merges the lines of contemporary dance and performance art within film, photography, architecture, pop culture, technology and sound. Her embodied practice is guided by the interdependence of physical exhaustion, intuitive groove, movement meditation, ritualistic practice, migratory journeys, and paranormal experiences. This is all intertwined within the craft of theatrics and amplified with a visual component that often taps into the magical, surreal, fictional and dystopic. Del Valle has developed a wide range of interdisciplinary solo works and is the founder, director and choreographer of the KDV PERFORMANCE GROUP.

"Two Intertwinded Performances" are two joint performances between Steve Katona and Mauro Ventura with Kianí del Valle.

The Alien Athena Foundation for Art is pleased to be able to support the performance, the artists and the curators.

Steve Katona is a German countertenor, composer, actor, and artist from Berlin. He studied opera at the UdK Berlin and works at the nexus of various artistic disciplines. His work encompasses a syncretism of musical, performative, and experimental elements that strive to dissolve the boundaries between genres.

For Gallery Weekend Berlin 2024, Steve Katona created a transcendent musical experience where vocals, an electrically modified zither, and a meditation bowl blended to craft a serene soundscape inspired by spiritual minimalism. Drawing from elements of sacred music like Gregorian chant, the performance offered a moment of reflection and inner peace. Without emphasizing religious contexts, Katona delved into the depths of the soul through music.

"Two Intertwinded Performances" are two joint performances between Steve Katona and Mauro Ventura with Kianí del Valle.

The Alien Athena Foundation for Art is pleased to be able to support the performance, the artists and the curators.

On the occasion of this year's Berlin Art Week, Michael Müller's 126-part work "Lektüre und Ablenkung" will be on display at his Berlin studio. Please join us for the opening reception and the book launch of the accompanying Catalogue Raisonné on Friday, 15 Sept 2023, 7-9 pm, Studio Michael Müller, Lise-Meitner-Straße 39-41, 10589 Berlin

“To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric”, noted Theodor W. Adorno in 1949—and thus also questioned other forms of artistic engagement with the Holocaust. The symposium Am Abgrund der Bilder, which takes place in the context of the exhibition of the same name in the St. Matthäus-Kirche in Berlin, looks at various forms of artistic engagement with the Holocaust. What could be appropriate artistic forms of remembrance? Is it possible to approach the Shoah in images? The symposium takes up these questions and brings them into discussion with international image scholars, philosophers and philosophers of religion.

With lectures by Gideon Greif, Thomas Macho, Almut Shulamit Bruckstein, Hubertus von Amelunxen and Lukas Töpfer. Moderated by Julia Voss.

The opening lecture will be given by Benjamin Buchloh on 31 August at 7 pm.

The full program of the symposium can be found here.
Participation is free of charge, please register here.

In cooperation with Alien Athena Foundation for Art, Bard College Berlin, Evangelische Akademie zu Berlin, Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank, Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt, and Deutsche Postcode Lotterie.

The exhibition "A Life in Pictures. A Portrait of Seeing for Rudolf Zwirner" traces the various stages of the gallery owner’s life as reflected in art. Works from different periods of origin are juxtaposed to create exciting dialogues, enabling conclusions to be drawn about existential themes of humankind.

Since 1956, all aspects of Rudolf Zwirner’s life have been closely linked with art, the development of which he decisively shaped in the second half of the twentieth century up to the present day: professionally as a gallery owner, secretary general of documenta II, cofounder of the world’s first art fair, and curator, but also privately in intensive exchange with artists. "Life in Pictures. A Portrait of Seeing for Rudolf Zwirner", shown on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, makes a plea that art as an essential part of the human condition. The more than fifty works in the exhibition, which come from museums, private collections, as well as the Deutsche Bank Collection, which owes important acquisitions to the Zwirner gallery, paint an artistic portrait of this impressive, multi-faceted man. At the same time, however, they stand for the constants, ruptures, and developments in art and the art trade since the postwar period, which Zwirner decisively influenced and shaped. Rudolf Zwirner was already associated with most of the artists represented in the show in the early stages of their careers and participated in their later successes.

Featuring Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, Serge Charchoune, Max Ernst, Dan Flavin, David Hockney, Martha Jungwirth, Konrad Klapheck, Astrid Klein, Maria Lassnig, Agnes Martin, Olaf Metzel, Henri Michaux, Piet Mondrian, Blinky Palermo, Francis Picabia, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and others.

Curated by Philipp Bollmann and Michael Müller

Photo © 1971 by Angelika Platen

The first volume of the Catalogue Raisonné of Michael Müller’s artistic oeuvre also functions as an exhibition catalogue and is dedicated to the monumental painting Der geschenkte Tag [The Given Day], measuring approx. 6 × 65 m, which Michael Müller created for his solo exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, 2022/23. The 24-part painting as well as the exhibition as a whole elaborate on the Greek myth of the twins Castor and Polydeuces (Castor and Pollux), the Dioscuri. In addition to the history of the works’ creation and an extensive interview with the artist, essays, and a lyrical composition by American literary scholar and translator Stanley Lombardo update the story of the Dioscuri for the 21st century.

Michael Müller is showing a complex of works created between 2013 and 2022 at St. Matthäus-Kirche, Berlin, that is dedicated to the question of the possibilities and impossibilities of an artistic engagement with the Holocaust. In a 16-part work, Müller questions Gerhard Richter's "Birkenau" cycle by uncovering its layers and revealing mechanisms that, when examined closely, open up a space for discussion. What unites the works shown in the exhibition "Am Abgrund der Bilder" is that they represent an interrogation from different perspectives in a broad spectrum of artistic media: Painting, sculpture, photography and text. They evoke the openness of questioning, foregoing a definitive answer and instead allowing for constant discussion.

Exhibition in collaboration with Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank. Sponsored by Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.

We are pleased to present the new website of Studio Michael Müller. Here you can now find artworks, exhibitions, publications and much more in a new clear and updated design.