Crystal Ball Berlin – Gegenwartskunst und Performance

Birch Hayes – Uranian Atlas

Opening Reception, April, 28th, Friday, 7 pm

28.4 bis 16. Juni, Di. und Fr. jeweils von 14 – 19 Uhr

Birch Hayes calls his first exhibition in Berlin, at the Crystal Ball gallery the Atlas of Uranus. In a way, this is an extremely apt description for the works presented by the American artist. Hayes’ elaborate, detailed drawings sometimes seem like cartographies of an unknown world or even like surfaces of a distant planet. This may be due to the homogeneous but alien organic presence of the structures depicted and their particular expansiveness of perspective. In this respect, the drawings evoke an almost authentic presence, familiar from scientific illustrations, biological diagrams, and drawings based on nature. Certain structures appear as if cut into, at these points their structure becomes apparent and explainable. All discovered forms and things show themselves. Hayes uses these attributes masterfully, creating a real plane, but presenting us not with a familiar one, but with an extraordinary glimpse into a mysterious, fantastic world that seems strangely real. Physical structures lie, stick, grow in and out with other substances. Things float, buzz, are interconnected, and the motifs sketch a specific dreamy variety. Birch Hayes drawings in this way have similarity in strategy to science fiction, as the latter also repeatedly indulges in describing the connections and details in order to assert reality. The artist Birch Hayes, however, has no plan or sense of mission in this direction at all. He calls the exhibition of his black and white and color works Uranian Atlas, because that is how they appear to him. Hayes draws to enter a dreamy state of meditation. He has no specific ideas from the beginning, but in an automatic, unconscious formulation also discovers one form next to the other and records it in the picture. But it is thanks to this idiosyncratic and particular position of Haye’s work that the worlds and landscapes can be explored light-footedly, as if we have now gained access to a world of the unconscious while awake. Lydia Karstadt

Ich Ich Ich : Ich bin Ich !

Wir bitten Sie dazu, selbst als Star auf unserer Vernissage im Kunstpunkt zu erscheinen!

die Galerie Crystal Ball zu Gast im Kunstpunkt Berlin, Schlegelstraße 6

Eröffnung mit Happening und Performance am 14ten April, 19 Uhr

Ich bin Ich, ca. 12 min, film still, with “Pas de Costumes”, Berlin 2023 – exhibition and performance project, video, installation, 2019-2023

Am Freitag, 14. April 2023 um 19 Uhr eröffnet die Ausstellung ICH ICH ICH im KUNSTPUNKT BERLIN,
Schlegelstr. 6, 10115 Berlin-Mitte.

Together with another artist collective (Stay Hungry), Pas de Costumes is invited to explore the toxic effects of egomaniacal artist cult during Gallery Weekend at Kunstpunkt Berlin in April. In spring 2019, Natascha Frioud and Manfred Kirschner began the project of “I am I.” Since then, a loose group of female artists has formed around the Crystal Ball exhibition space in Pas de Costumes. The current presentation features works by Caren Sielaff, Miriam Jadischke, Berit Schneider, Stefan Ruf, Zoe Tomruck, Lydia Karstadt, Natascha Frioud, Gabi Garland and Frank Schoppmeier.
“I am I” comprises a group of works centered around the fictional artist-personality Arielle Schuberti. An exhibition opening, a series of artworks, accompanying performances and a documentary video, create the person Arielle. A strongly self-referential person who is convinced to be a very important artist. The video jumps between fiction; the vernissage with play scenes and reality, showing the artists working on the project. The complex of “I am I” aims to problematize the cliché, the narcissistic artist, in the form of over-individualization, which in its exaggeration can have a toxic effect on society.
Pas de Costumes has been working on the concept since 2019. In the process, an “Oneday Exhibition” with works by the artist “Arielle Schuberti” has been realized in the exhibition space Crystal Ball in Kreuzberg. This opening of the exhibition of “Arielle” was promoted with posters, internet presence and email invitations. Crystal Ball had, as usual, invited to one of her vernissages. Unknowing visitors were then confronted with a fake presentation and a highly performative evening. At the exhibition opening, fiction and reality collided, Arielle played on the keyboard of her self-absorption and egocentricity. After a few questionable performances, the situation was hardly tenable. Arielle destroyed one of her works when a buyer showed interest in it. It came to an éclat with the gallery owner and culminated in that the artist destroyed her works in front of the public.
In the exhibition ICH ICH ICH at Kunstpunkt, Pas de Costumes will show the film “Ich bin Ich” for the first time, as an official document of the project. The premiere will be accompanied by an installation of leftover artworks by artist Arielle Schuberti, as well as works by her friends. An extraordinary, introductory happening will accompany the performance group’s exhibition.

For this, we ask you to come as a star yourself to our vernissage at Kunstpunkt!

Exhibition dates:

Vernissage: 14.04.2023, ab 19 Uhr
Ausstellungsdauer: 15.04. – 01.05.2023
Öffnungszeiten: Fr 17–21 Uhr, Sa + So 15–19 Uhr
Finissage & GET-TOGETHER NETZWERK: 01.05.2023, ab 15 Uhr

Becky: Walk the Village with the Cuckoo Bird

Exhibition opening with concert, Fr. 31. März um 19 Uhr

Exhibition from March, 31st to April, 2nd, 14 bis 19 Uhr

Becky c/o Crystal Ball, Berlin — Becky, Foto: Emily Leshner

A swan looks dirty on closer inspection. Words lie on the tongue and loll in the fur. And the heart is nothing more than a hollow muscle. These are the things Becky sings about. Becky (She/ They) is drag persona, performance artist and puppeteer of herself. From first Youtube music videos, 2022 evolved into charming live gigs with a lot of makeup and minimalist drums. Her songs are intimate insights into a queer Berlin of today with a view on the East German province of yesterday, alternating between melancholy and absurdity. With a musical DIY attitude and German as well as English lyrics, sometimes poetic, sometimes painfully direct, she creates tender little worlds that resonate. Becky’s sound combines singer-songwriter elements, pop melodies and alternative rock sounds. Her first EP, Tossing and Turning, was released in January. In “Walk The Village With The Cuckoo Bird,” drag persona Becky strides through the place of her childhood, a dreamy East German village, always on the lookout for other queer people. In the process, each step is also an act of reclaiming space. Sounds and stories buzz around her. According to a local legend, a man was saved from the flood precisely because he imitated the call of the cuckoo and the villagers heard this call for help. The sound collage in the video plays with this legend, the cuckoo call, the sounds from the surroundings, fragmenting and deconstructing them until no orientation is possible anymore. The work associatively questions the stories of the village, which are concentrated in the baroque castle of the place. The venue of today was a secret file storage facility of the GDR and previously an SA sports school. “Walk The Village With The Cuckoo Bird” was shown in a first version at the festival Traumburg 2022 (Dornburg Castle on the Elbe) and can now be seen for the first time in Berlin.

Walk The Village With The Cuckoo Bird, 2 Kanal Video Installation, Mathias Becker, 2022

ERDEN. Naturphilosophische Brocken – Book Presentation & Audiovisual Performance

am Freitag, 3. Februar 2023 um 19:30 Uhr

Erden-Buchcover, (unter Verwendung eines Bildes von Elisabeth von Samsonow,

Geo Psyche Backup System, Tempera auf Leinwand, 2021)

Extraction regimes, elective affinities, bodily juice analyses, alternative epistemologies of nature: Volume 45 of Schriften zur Verkehrswissenschaft, edited by Ivo Gurschler, Andreas Hofbauer, and Alexander Klose, gathers “necessarily fragmentary advances to think about nature in times of crisis.”
Theorizing turns again to a sphere that, for lack of another term, continues to be called nature. At the same time, nature returns in the form of floods, droughts, and storms in an ever more urgent manner, and people increasingly learn to see themselves as earthlings. Under these circumstances, radical gestures of decentering into terrestrial constellations emerged as new forms of thinking about nature. The volume gathers such advances, which necessarily remain fragmentary in their totality, as four chunks of natural philosophy – thrown onto the earth and into the unknown.

Presentations, projections and audience discussion by and with the authors Salome Rodeck, Tom Turnbull and Daniel Tyradellis, the artist Jenny Michel, the composer Konstantin Schimanowski as well as the editors Andreas L. Hofbauer, Alexander Klose and possible surprise guests.

Followed by Crystal Ball Bar and record music by dj.catastrophé

Apfelmus

Eröffnung am 14.1. um 19 Uhr

Apfelmus – 16 Jahre Galerie Crystal Ball
Ausstellungssalon und Veranstaltungsreihe

Performances zur Eröffnung:
20:00 Lydia Karstadt: All You Need
22:00 Danja Schilling: Danger Danger/ Volume 2: Apfelmus

Ein Paket mit der Aufschrift Apfelmus steht auf einer Wiese — Apfelmus, Karton/ Papier/ Shellack, M. Kirschner, 1996

Lydia Karstadt wanted “Applesauce” to be a thematic group exhibition for her birthday, because in 2023 the Crystal Ball phenomenon will be 16 years old. It is true that there is probably not much left to celebrate at the moment. But “Applesauce” is supposed to convey its positive impact in a reflection on essential life contents. Peace and human renaturation. The subordination of human existence to the ecological sphere appears as the inevitable, only way out of the crisis. In Karstadt’s view, art is never an opponent or even a target, but a partner in the conflict for a future.
Numerous foodstuffs have taken on a higher significance in the museum art context in recent months as a result of the protest culture. Thus applesauce can be a performative device; political statement, enigmatic object, poetic sphere, or just a big old cardboard box with “applesauce” written on it. The playful exhibition in Crystal Ball shows positions of artists who, through the subject and its field of interpretation, imply associations of transience in their work. The exhibition salon is accompanied by a program of events. Performances will be shown at the opening.

Françoise Cactus, Evita Emersleben, Ersatzschrankorchester, Gabi Garland, Elke Graalfs, Miriam Jadischke, Manfred Kirschner, Andreas Kotulla, Gabriele Regiert, Danja Schilling, Caren Sielaff, Juwelia St. St., Lydia Karstadt, Vikenti Komminski, C.C. Kruse, Agnieszka Pasek, Frank Schoppmeier, Silky, Berit Schneider, Veronika Schumacher, Uwe Teichmann, The Wa, die Zugvögel und weiteren Künstler:innen

Aria of the god of happiness: Brother, you make my eyes wet. I see your life is no fun. Here is an apple, look, I have three, so I can give you one. I don’t see anything excessive about it, we can both live. Now promise me you won’t swallow the seeds in your greed, but before I leave, spit them into the ground. And if it becomes an apple tree in the middle of your field, then come and get the apples from the tree which you cultivate. (Brecht/ Dessau)

Freitag, 20.01. um 19 Uhr
analogSCHATTEN – Die Zugvögel Improvisation mit Licht und Schatten

Freitag 03.02. um 19:30 Uhr
ERDEN. Naturphilosophische Brocken – Buchpräsentation
Extraktionsregime, Wahlverwandtschaften, Körpersaftanalysen, alternative Naturepistemologien: Der von Ivo Gurschler, Andreas Hofbauer und Alexander Klose herausgegebene Band 45 der Schriften zur Verkehrswissenschaft versammelt “notwendig fragmentarisch bleibende Vorstöße, um über Natur in Krisenzeiten nachzudenken“.
Präsentation, Projektionen und Podiumsgespräch mit den Herausgebern und Autor:innen

Samstag, 25.2. um 19 Uhr/ Finissage
Apfelmus – der Film, Thedinghausen 1996
M. Kirschner, Sound von Christian C. Kruse
Wiederaufführung mit Performances:
Wie man einen halben Pudding macht – Evita Emersleben
The Making Of Apfelmus- Manfred Kirschner

Analogschatten – die Zugvögel

Performance am Sonntag den 11. Dezember um 17 Uhr.

& 20. Januar 2023

Analogschatten/ Performance 2022
On Sunday, December 11, the “Zugvögel” will make a guest appearance at the Crystal Ball gallery. The performance group around Zoe Tomruk works with the technique of action theater developed by Ruth Sapora in the 70s in the USA. In this technique, all actions are brought forth in the presentness of the moment. On Dec. 16, 2022, the Zugvögel will bring “Analogschatten 2” to the Dramatische Republik at Schudomastrasse 32 at 7 p.m.

Action Theatre is an improvisational performance technique developed by the American performance artist, Ruth Zaporah. Action Theatre is defined by its focus on embodied awareness, the tracking of the present moment through sensory experience, and by a structured training that uses exploration to build the performer’s ‘formal dexterity and the ability to “listen” to oneself and one’s acting partners’. This physical theatre technique is documented in Zaporah’s 1995 book, Action Theatre: The Improvisation of Presence. (Wikipedia)

Am 16.12.2022 bringen die Zugvögel „Analogschatten 2“ in der Dramatischen Republik in der Schudomastraße 32 um 19 Uhr zur Aufführung.

& am 20. Januar performen die Zugvögel innerhalb der Ausstellung “Apfelmus” erneut mit Analogschatten 3

Weltschmerz Symposium

am 24. & 25. November 2022 mit Viktor Kegli und Kai Lillich

Symposium zum Weltschmerz
Lamenting and complaining in the digital age

November, 24.th and 25.th, 6 pm Uhr

Symposium – Lamenting and Complaining in the Digital Age

In conversation with artists, philosophers, musicians and other people, artist Victor Kégli explores the question of how the traditional art of lamenting and complaining can be transported into the digital modern age.

Limited number of participants, please register in advance. November the 24th or 25.th 2022. Start of each event at 18.00 h.

Idea and organization: Victor Kegli & Kai Lillich

Anmeldung: 0152 04980110

Bang …

… difficult, or the possibility of making an exhibition

Vernissage and open salon on May 21 at 7 p.m.
The exhibition is open every Thursday from 2 to 7 p.m. and by appointment

with: Gabi Garland, Miriam Licia Jadischke, Manfred Kirschner, Kai Lillich, Lee Negris, Sigrun Paulsen, Ilze Orinska, Oliver Voigt, Gabriele Regiert and other artists.

Lydia Karstadt doesn’t know what to do either –

and since she sometimes goes away in the summer to demonstrate for peace, to bury “Weltschmerz” at the Müritz or to grow vegetables in the province, she has thought up a self-maintaining exhibition. To do so, she interviewed artists she met on her way to Zickenplatz or recently. To give coincidence a chance, she asked them to participate in something that she herself does not know what it will be. An experimental exhibition, an experimental setup. Pacifistic, ambitious, voluntary, honest, entertaining, versatile, hopeful …

The exhibition salon is open every thursday from 14 to 19 o’clock and gladly by appointment.

as well as in the salon: Café Unst, arbitrary basic research & peaceful screen prints

Javier Lozano – Antibodies

Vernissage on Sat. 12. March at 7 p.m
from 12.3.-10.4. and 25.4.-30.4.2022< from 12.3.-10.4. and 25.4.-30.4.2022
Opening hours: Tuesdays & Fridays, 2-7 p.m and by appointment
Finissageon Fr. 06 May at 7 p.m

Javier Lozano, Unrequeired, 31 x 23 cm, Auqarell auf Karton

Javier Lozano is a talented draftsman and graphic designer. He taught at the IED in Madrid until 2020. In his first exhibition at the Crystal Ball gallery, however, the focus of his work is painting. Lozano, whose extraordinarily reduced style masterfully balances ironic connotation with pleasurable strokes, is showing a selection of new watercolors under the title “Antibodies.” Accurately applied gestural strokes and sensitively applied areas of color characterize these works. Lozano’s luscious art always seems to sound out just how much is needed to create a presence, a being. A few fine strokes, a reddish color surface set off against a darker brown one, and he already creates the cheek, the look of a being. Interacting with others or playing with themselves, they become bodies of his spherical images that shine with an ambivalence equal parts romantic and ironic. Javier Lozano’s works are mysterious, as irritatingly certain in their assertion of reductiveness as they are imbued with lightness. This ambivalence therefore makes them very lively.

ANTIBODIES

Your invisible friends came to the party.
Lucky charms, protective beings.
These paintings, like daydreaming.
They don´t care, they just follow their nature.
Inevitably. Ghostly trace.
Mind your antibodies and everybody else´s.
What are the characters of these paintings doing?
Hard to say, but whatever it is, they do it well.
Free your mind, free your body.
Free your freedom, free your money.

J. Lozano

Siebdruck T-Shirt Labor

Tuesdays from 2 to 4 p.m,

from February 15th, with a maximum of 4 participants. Access according to current hygiene rules with daily neg. test. Basic course: aesthetic practice & basic skills for textile screen printing Registration please phone/ call once! (no voice messages) Tel: 0151 55 91 0099 (11 am to 10 pm)

Seviervorschlag, Crystal Ball, 2022 c. Lydia Karstadt

In the basic course with screen printing icon Lydia Karstadt you will learn basic techniques of the screen printing process. From the beginning of the idea, your inspiration over drawing to the development and realization of a motif with serigraphy. You will learn and later be able to coat, dry, expose with your motif, professionally wash out, re-expose & prepare for printing.You will learn more about color selection / color effects and learn independent printing on the screen printing machinewith textile stage and the correct use of the squeegee for good color economy. Material costs one-time (screen, coating, colors, T-shirts, other) : 120,-, Participation each: 25,-.

Following Course: (Summer 2022) Silk Screen Print Collage Couture

Galerie Crystal Ball