30.04.2010 - 2.05.2010

Measuring Potentials

Location: Potsdamer Strasse, 88
Time: April 30 to May 2, 2010
Artists: David Blamey, Peter Downsbrough, Ilona Kalnoky, Bettina Khano, Susanne Kriemann, maverick, Dane Mitchell, Olaf Nicolai, Peter Welz.

Press Statement:
For more than twenty years Berlin has developed into one of the most innovative cultural cities worldwide. With its outstanding museums, film festivals, and galleries, it now fosters an atmosphere that attracts an increasing amount of artists, collectors, and connoisseurs. About 600 galleries all over the city provide a rich setting to experience the newest waves and tendencies in modern art. But while this fast development is quite remarkable, it is interesting to see, that during the youngest period a lot of independent spaces have vanished and some of the crucial aspects of a discourse (such as questioning and relating to the dynamics of the city or relating to the potentials of an available space) have increasingly disappeared.Measuring Potentials traces back this Berlin tradition of working and experimenting with available spaces in the city. By taking over the shop of the new built P88 building right in the center of the new and upcoming art district around Potsdamer Strasse this exhibition relates to the question of new architecture in the city, the openness of yet unused space, as well as to the surrounding development of neighborhoods and their gentrification.The works in Measuring Potentials choose very different ways of addressing these dynamics: while some of the works seem to ask more questions about our own ways of measuring or setting ourselves in relation to certain formal patterns, objects or spaces, others put more focus on the question of the potential. What is our understanding of a potential? What hopes or projections do we find in the potential of a building or a certain area in a city? What are the potentials of ones work in relation to an architectural setting or other works?On the one hand, this approach can be seen in line with the ideas of what has been named relational aesthetics and focuses on the dynamic between „artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context“ . On the other hand, this group of works at the same time take the exactly opposite way of approaching the question of social/political relevance: this means they ask how to address a certain topic like space or a setting very personal.It is not the goal of this exhibition to give final solutions or answers, but to raise a certain awareness towards this field of dynamics. This group exhbition is an agglomeration of positions that create a dynamic that enables to think beyond the established pathways and open ways into hidden/unused potentials.