Installation views 'Pleats', on view until 21 October at BPA// Raum with works by Hasan Aksaygın @hasanaksaygin and Virgil b/g Taylor @vbgt. BPA// Raum
Sophienstraße 21
Sophie-Gips-Höfe
10178 Berlin
Enter through red passageway
 Opening Times: Fri–Sat, 15:00–18:00 Photos: Eric Bell

Thank you Pinar Öğrenci for joining us as a guest mentor this week! Artist and filmmaker @pinar_ogrenci has a background in architecture, which informs her poetic, atmospheric video-based works and site specific installations that accumulate traces of ‘material culture’ related to forced displacement. Her works have been exhibited widely at museums and institutions including documenta fifteen, Berlinische Galerie, 12th Gwangju Biennial, MAXXI Museum and many others. Her first solo exhibition abroad was realized at Kunst Haus-Hundertwasser Museum Vienna in 2017. She has been nominated for Böttcherstrasse Kunst Prize 2022 in Bremen and won Villa Romana Art Prize for 2023. Öğrenci used to work as guest lecturer at Master Studies of Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee Raum Strategies. She is the founder of MARSistanbul, an art initiative which was active between 2010-2018. Since the late 1990s, Öğrenci has extensively written on contemporary art and architecture in different platforms. #guestmentor #pınaröğrenci #berlinprogramforartists #bpa

Join us during @berlinartweek at BPA// Raum for the opening of “Pleats” by BPA// participant @hasanaksaygin and @vbgt on Thursday 14 September, 17:00–21:00. Until 21 October 2023.
 Additionally, the reading series “Folds” featuring Onur Çimen, Rapha Linden, Patty Nash, İz Öztat and Ashkan Sepahvand takes place on 17 September from 15:00–16:30, and on 21 October from 16:00–17:30.
 
Hasan Aksaygın’s “The Veil” is a series of paintings speculating on the spiritual history of a piece of fabric. This untold story is hidden between the bulges of the Sudarium, also called the Mandylion, and the folds of the veil of the prophet of Persian miniatures to warn us of a contemporary conflict: the polarized cultural desires for "exposure" - the hyper-normalized post-internet narcissism - and "concealment" - a supposedly anti-colonial scopic regime of conservatism. 

Virgil b/g Taylor’s work series “Heavy Body” discourses with its audience through the chemical element Lead (Pb, Plumbum in Latin). The artist bends, binds, and twists the sculptures to mimic the archaeological finds of magic curse tablets fashioned from the ancient water pipes across the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. However, these works by Taylor are neither curses nor spells, but lessons in variant curvatures of that old metal in the present, instructing us in the aesthetics of vitality and lethargy so that the sacred and profane, toxic and harmless might mingle together. 

The reading series “Folds” will open up with friends of the artists (Onur Çimen, Rapha Linden, Patty Nash, İz Öztat and Ashkan Sepahvand), telling stories around the topics of the exhibition, and touching upon the effects of various Abrahamic traditions on the bodies that materialize in art today. The unveiling of incantations will provide a site for new and old stories to sort themselves out.  
BPA// Raum
Sophienstraße 21
Sophie-Gips-Höfe
10178 Berlin
Enter through red passageway
 Opening Times: Fri–Sat, 15:00–18:00
Berlin Art Week 2023 (15.–17.09.2023): daily from 11:00–18:00 [1] Graphic: Virgil b/g Taylor [2] Photo: Davit Giorgadze [3] Photo: Sam Richardson #bpa #berlinprogramforartists #bpaparticipant #berlinartweek2023 #baw #pleats

This weekend we are pleased to invite you to ‘THE HEIST: A Tour Guide’, a performative intervention in and outside of BPA// Raum by Pibao Gongsi (Liu Chao, Hannah O’Flynn @hannhan, Tian Guoxin @tian_guoxin). Saturday, 02.09.23, 18:00–20:30 Meeting point at BPA//Raum, the tour to Museum Island starts at 19:00 Sunday, 03.09.23, 13:00–15:30 Meeting point at BPA//Raum, the tour to Museum Island starts at 14:00 BPA//Raum Sophienstraße 21 Sophie-Gips-Höfe 10178 Berlin Please note that BPA// Raum will be closed once the tour started. Collective Pibao Gongsi transforms BPA//Raum into a tourism office. It serves as the starting point for The Heist: A Tour Guide, a walk through Museum Island for your voyeuristic delight. On this tour, Pibao Gongsi will be sharing personal anecdotes and stories about the Island: from the militaristic-capitalist expansion of the empire in the 19th century to the museum’s intrinsic contribution to imperial aesthetic expression. In erecting and running such monolithic monuments, we ask ourselves: what labour stayed hidden underneath, powering the machine of beauty? The stones that house the impartial sciences wept. Their tears brushed the walls in shining white. Pibao Gongsi is formed by BPA// participant Tian Guoxin together with Liu Chao and Hannah O’Flynn under the umbrella of the collective with the rubbles of old palaces @withtherubblesofoldpalaces. It researches how empire represents itself, as well as the relation between aesthetics and imperial power. It looks at how the practice of art, infrastructures of exhibition making and of cultural knowledge production are indebted to the relentless efforts of empire-making. Pibao Gongsi is a collective effort to look at how art and exhibition practices can be thought of outside, beyond and before imperial self-representation, even while Empire continues to be our daily experience. Image: Tian Guoxin & Hannah O'Flynn via Midjourney #berlinprogramforartists #bpa #bpaparticipant #bparaum #theheist

Installation views of 'Base Motive’, recently on view at BPA// with works by Robert Keil @koredraw and BPA// alumn Scott Roben @scottroben. Keil’s work in sculpture draws attention to the way that objects and materials assert their own realities. A mouth-blown glass object filled with methane gas becomes a lens through which to observe the space, other viewers, and surrounding works. His ongoing series of works strings is produced by disassembling robotic dogs and reassembling their parts, including the programmed scores that govern their motor responses to external stimuli. These are then reassembled as kinetic sculptures that move constantly but nearly imperceptibly, and joined with the electric circuitry of the exhibition space.  Roben’s paintings are driven by the medium’s tactile qualities, including the close relationship between touch and affect. The painting Curb employs a frottage technique in oil paint, in which paint is scraped away from the surface of the canvas to register impressions of what lies directly underneath. The directness of its (seemingly) factual approach is countered by nearby works that appear more artificial or constructed. These follow the motif of a figure staged mid-movement on a wood floor that resembles the floor of the exhibition space, as well as the nonhuman figure of a partially opened umbrella. Directional forces, gazes, and touches circulate between the paintings, as well as elements of the space and Keil’s works, in an open-ended exchange. (Excerpt exhibition text) #berlinprogramforartists #bpa #bpaalumn #bparaum Photos: Eric Bell

BPA// participant Göksu Kunak @goeksu_kunak is pleased to invite you to HAPPY HOUR: A fundraiser event for earthquake victims of Turkey, Kurdistan and Syria.  Feel welcome to join us for readings, music and drinks with artists and curators Nikolas Brummer @nikolasbrummer, Léon Kruijswijk @leopoldardinio, Göksu Kunak @goeksu_kunak, Chima Okerenkwo @chimaokerenkwo and Lauryn Youden @youdenism on Friday, 18.08.2023, 18:00 – 21:00.  BPA// Raum Sophienstraße 21 Sophie-Gips-Höfe 10178 Berlin Enter through red passageway #bpa #berlinprogramforartists #bpaparticipant #bparaum

Apply for BPA//‘s 2024-25 cycle till September 10th - find info on our website! 👉 link in bio

Introducing: Zhiyuan Yang Born and raised in Beijing, Zhiyuan Yang (CN, 1992) studies narratives of marginalized characters, and their ambivalence between seeking to belong, and a desire to remain alienated. Through her often-autobiographical work, Yang critiques social-political issues that are universally prevalent. She invents slippery methodologies to challenge the elitism and exclusivity of the art world driven by a mythology of success. In one of her projects, she exchanged artist and authorial roles with her parents; in another, to achieve an artist visa, she counterfeited an exhibition that only existed for immigration documents; and for her first solo exhibition, she subverted that ‘opportunity’ to extend it to a two-person show with an artist friend. @lensyoung419 #bpa #berlinprogramforartists #bpaparticipants

Currently at BPA// Raum: 'Base Motive' The collaborative exhibition by Robert Keil @koredraw and Scott Roben (BPA// alumn 2018) @scottroben uses the term ‘base motive’ as shared point of reference. It’s on view until August 12. Opening Times: Fri–Sat 15:00–18:00  BPA// Raum Sophienstraße 21 Sophie-Gips-Höfe 10178 Berlin Enter through red passageway #bparaum #bpaalumn #berlinprogramforartists #basemotive

Introducing Catherine Nichols as guest mentor. @catherinenichols567 is an arts and literary scholar, curator and writer based in Berlin. She currently works as curator at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in Berlin having recently curated Manifesta 14 Prishtina: it matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise. In 2021 she co-directed beuys 2021, a year-long centenary programme comprising some 30 cultural events in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as well as an online radio station, a symposium and an interdisciplinary laboratory exploring radical democratic forms of collectivity. She has published widely on contemporary art as well as editing numerous catalogues and books. #bpa #berlinprogramforartists #guestmentor #catherinenichols

Opening Friday 30 June, 17:00 – 21:00 at BPA// Raum: 'Base Motive' by Robert Keil @koredraw and Scott Roben @scottroben 01.07. – 12.08.23 The term “base motive” points to intentions underlying certain behaviors, perhaps concealed or even improper. Working off of the term as a shared point of reference for their collaborative exhibition, the artists Robert Keil and Scott Roben follow its linguistic components to their own root meanings in terms of architecture and movement. Through paintings and sculptures that intervene in the space of the BPA//Raum, Keil and Roben attend to the ways that literal and represented space impact and can be impacted by psychological space. To that end, indirect and contingent qualities like atmosphere and mood, as well as the role of viewers, take on heightened significance. Scott Roben holds an MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and was a participant at BPA// Berlin program for artists in 2018. His work has been exhibited at various venues in Berlin and New York, and his writings on art have appeared in various artist monographs and publications, including Art in America, Frieze, and Texte zur Kunst. Robert Keil graduated in 2019 with a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Bard College in New York and was previously a master student with Olaf Nicolai at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. His work has been exhibited at various venues, most recently at Museum Brandhorst and Pli, Munich. #bpa #berlinprogramforartists #bparaum #scottroben #robertkeil #basemotive

Introducing Renan Laru-an as guest mentor. @rgll____ (b. 1989, Berlin/Sultan Kudarat) is a researcher, curator and the artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary @savvycontemporary in Berlin. He creates exhibitionary, public, and research programs that study ‘insufficient’ and ‘subtracted’ images or subjects at the juncture of development and integration projects. Laru-an is a founding member of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN), a recently initiated public institution for contemporary art temporarily housed at the University of the Philippines Vargas Museum. Renan has been (co-)curator of the 2nd Biennale Matter of Art, Prague (2022); the 6th Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2019); the 8th OK.Video—Indonesia Media Arts Festival, Jakarta (2017); and other exhibitions. Laru-an’s scholarship has been supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and other fellowships. He was Curatorial Advisor to the 58th Carnegie International. #berlinprogramforartists #bpaguestmentor #bpa #savvycontemporary