VIEWS BERLIN

”Down To Earth“ at Gropius Bau
by Eva Scharrer
Agnes Denes, Wheatfield – A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan – With New York Financial Center , 1982

Low Emission

"The year 2020 has forced individuals and institutions to slow down, rethink how we live, and get used to the idea that the normality we knew is no more. Even though the threat of climate change has been looming for a while now, it took a virus to tell us to stop moving through the world the way we used to. So naturally, in its fourth year, the format “Immersion” – a collaboration between the Gropius Bau and the Berliner Festspiele exploring shifting spacialities and temporalities between art and music/theatre – went live. Initiated by Thomas Oberender and organised by a curatorial team joined by Julia Badaljan, Anja Predeick, Tino Sehgal, and Jeroen Versteele, “Down to Earth” is an exhibition consisting of both permanent and temporary works, activated by a “Climate Art Discourse unplugged” programme of live events between the staged and the Situationist: music, lectures by “experts of sustainable practice”, and “spontaneous interventions”. The curatorial text states that the exhibition understands itself as a situation, aiming to place its visitors directly inside its immersive topic: the climate and the Earth."

“DOWN TO EARTH”
GROPIUS BAU
13 AUGUST – 13 SEPTEMBER 2020

– This text appears in Spike #65. You can buy it in our online shop –

Gropius Bau
Berlin
Eva Scharrer

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Josh Smith, Queensboro Bridge , 2023, oil and acrylic on poly cotton, 183 x 213 cm. All images © Josh Smith. Courtesy: the artist and David Zwirner

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Shimabuku, Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere , 1994. Courtesy: the artist and Air de Paris, Romainville. Photo: Photo Marc Domag

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Whitney Claflin, Writer’s Block , 2023, vinyl on plexiglass, stretchfoil; four panels, each 119 x 119 cm. Courtesy: the artist and DREI, Cologne

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Photo: Gucci SS 2023

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Dineo Seshee Bopape, I Re-member Mama, 2023. © HAM/Helsinki Biennial/Sonja Hyytiäinen

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VALIE EXPORT, Körperkonfiguration , 1982, silver gelatin print, 119.5 × 180 cm. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023. Courtesy:the artist and Charim Galerie, Vienna

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Anna-Sophie Berger,  Untitled, Alexander Berger 1979 , 2023, C-print, 162.6 x 106.6. cm. Courtesy: Anna-Sophie Berger and Emanuel Layr, Vienna. Photo: Kunstdokumentation

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Julia Scher, Greta , 2022, marble 40 x 76 x 30 cm. © Rolf K. Wegst. Courtesy: the artist and Drei, Cologne

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#76
Joan Didion’s pair of Celine faux-tortoiseshell sunglasses, which sold at auction in November 2022 for $27,000

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#76
Left: Pablo Picasso, The Sculptor , 1931, oil on plywood, 285 x 96 cm; right: Pablo Picasso, The Supplicant Woman , 1937, gouache on wood, 24 x 18.5 cm. Both: © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy: Musée national Picasso, Paris

Left: Pablo Picasso, The Sculptor, 1931, oil on plywood, 285 x 96 cm; right: Pablo Picasso, The Supplicant Woman, 1937, gouache on wood, 24 x 18.5 cm. Both: © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy: Musée national Picasso, Paris

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Outrage Inactivism