Last Night’s Fortune Teller
Third part of an exhibition series with new acquisitions of Chinese and international contemporary art
‘Last Night’s Fortune Teller’ is the final part of a three-part exhibition series organized by the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection to show its new acquisitions of contemporary Chinese and international art. The newly acquired artworks have been presented to the public in Berlin and Stuttgart. During the course of the exhibitions it has become clear that the works by the Chinese artists relate to a number of key themes in the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection, including trends in abstract and conceptual art and new media forms. However, at the same time these artworks represent an entirely new and distinctive mix within the organic structure of the collection in both cultural and aesthetic terms. The Mercedes-Benz Art Collection’s acquisition policy has focused on artists from centers such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong province, and Hong Kong. The collection’s forward-looking acquisition strategy, accompanied by in-depth local research, has enabled it to purchase key works by well-known international artists, but also pieces by members of the younger generation of artists (born around 1980) who are not yet widely known in Germany. Overall the works provide insight into a nation which is the subject of enthralling and controversial debates and which will play a critical role on the global stage in the 21st century, not only because of its classical traditions, but also because of its rapid economic and cultural growth.
Like its predecessors, the current exhibition ‘Last Night’s Fortune Teller’ presents different aspects of German, Chinese, and international art. The exhibition has deliberately distanced itself from an interpretation of the works based only on the country or cultural group from which they originate, with the aim of focusing visitors’ attention on the questions inherent in the pieces. The first part of the exhibition series ‘From a Poem to the Sunset’ (Mercedes-Benz Contemporary, Berlin, 2015) focused primarily on installations and video artworks and presented the conceptual approaches of contemporary Chinese art. In the second part ‘On Curbstone Jewels and Cobblestones’ (Mercedes-Benz Contemporary, Berlin, 2015/16), the overall theme was photographic and sculptural works. ‘Last Night’s Fortune Teller’ returns to the dialogs and contrasts between the pieces on show. The focus in this latest exhibition is on sculptures and installations, together with works at the intersections between painting, photography, and video art. There is no overall thematic grouping.
Curated by Christian Ganzenberg and Renate Wiehager.
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Artists
Events
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin
Exhibition Opening
As part of the all-day opening, there will be short guided tours every hour:
2:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m, 4:00 p.m. (curator’s tour, English), 5:00 p.m. (curator’s tour), 6:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m.
There is no registration required.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin
Guided Tour - The Historical Space of Imagination
Guillaume Bijl Haris Epaminonda, Iman Issa
Everyday finds are collected and removed from their usual use value through artistic and aesthetic processes in many of the works in the exhibition. The works, which are thematized in the tour, range from tragicomic ‘Composition Trouvées’ (Bijl), installation memory spaces (Epaminonda) and sculptural objects of remembrance (Issa). All works allow a kaleidoscopic view that replaces given contents with a variety of meanings.
There is no registration required. English language. -
-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin
Guided Tour - In the Transition Zone of the Medium
Ulrich Erben, José Heerkens, Monika Brandmeier, Michael Sayles
For the artists Ulrich Erben, José Heerkens, Monika Brandmeier, and Michael Sayles, the material is thematic foreground.
The handling of color, light and material is rethought through the combination of different media such as drawing, painting and sculpture. The works question the relationship between readable form and materiality, abstraction, and content. This tour is dedicated to this field of tension.
There is no registration required. English language.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin
Guided Tour - The Promise of Tomorrow
Sylvie Fleury, Simone Westerwinter, Yu Honglei, Patrick Fabian Panetta
Through artistic appropriation, artists refer to works and objects from spheres of culture which are defined and categorized by public and personal inscriptions. Sylvie Fleury and Simone Westerwinter question the socially attributed gender roles through references to art history and consumption; in Yu Honglei's installations, individual and cultural contexts are presented and negated at the same time by focusing on the fragility of personal memories; With his conceptual work Proxy Affairs, Patrick Panetta leads the forms of of a collection’s presentation to the brink of absurdity.
There is no registration required. English language. -
-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin
Sound Performance Evening ‘The Fortunes of Last Night’ with Michael Sayles and Song Ming Ang
Mercedes-Benz Art Collection’s exhibition ‘Last Night’s Fortune Teller’ opens possibilities for interactions between cultures, among ideas, or across mediums through dialogs arising among the distinct visual works by Chinese and international artists. Participating artist Michael Sayles will present a musical collaboration with the Berlin based sound artist Song Ming Ang in the sound performance evening ‘The Fortunes of Last Night’. Following a brief introduction, the exhibition will be slightly darkened and viewers will be encouraged to experience the larger tendencies and subtle nuances of the works in new interactions for the 60 minute performance.
There is no registration required. English language. -
-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin
Calligraphy and art in China. Between tradition und presence by Andreas Schmid, artist and expert for Chinese visual art (German language)
Andreas Schmid lives and works as an artist and curator in Berlin. For more than 30 years, he has been deeply engaged with contemporary art in China, which he has monitored critically since his studies in Hangzhou in the 1980s. He was one of the first to bring Chinese contemporary art to Europe in several exhibitions and projects: China Avant-Garde (HKW Berlin, 1993, with Hans von Dijk and Jochen Noth), Contemporary Photo Art from the People’s Republic of China and Video Screenings (NBK Berlin, 1997), and The 8 of Paths –Art from Beijing, (Uferhallen Berlin, 2014, with Thomas Eller and Guo Xiaoyan). As a mediator and art teacher, he advocates a non-Eurocentric worldview. As an artist, Andreas Schmid works with different mediums (drawings, installations, light art), predominantly putting his art works in relationships with spaces and locations. He was/is represented in numerous national and international exhibitions. -
-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin
Calligraphy and art in China. Between tradition und presence by Andreas Schmid, artist and expert for Chinese visual art (German language)
Andreas Schmid lives and works as an artist and curator in Berlin. For more than 30 years, he has been deeply engaged with contemporary art in China, which he has monitored critically since his studies in Hangzhou in the 1980s. He was one of the first to bring Chinese contemporary art to Europe in several exhibitions and projects: China Avant-Garde (HKW Berlin, 1993, with Hans von Dijk and Jochen Noth), Contemporary Photo Art from the People’s Republic of China and Video Screenings (NBK Berlin, 1997), and The 8 of Paths –Art from Beijing, (Uferhallen Berlin, 2014, with Thomas Eller and Guo Xiaoyan). As a mediator and art teacher, he advocates a non-Eurocentric worldview. As an artist, Andreas Schmid works with different mediums (drawings, installations, light art), predominantly putting his art works in relationships with spaces and locations. He was/is represented in numerous national and international exhibitions. -
-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin
Digital and analog image technologies - artist talk with Monika Brandmeier and Anita Stöhr Weber (German language)
If one were to characterize the work of Monika Brandmeier, who is based in Berlin, in general terms, one could say that minimalist, non-literary poetics is a key feature of her sculptures, objects, drawings, photographs, and videos. The precision and energy in her work is focused on resolving three-dimensional and graphical facts that are expressed in the details and the ‘links.’ The central theme is ‘creating connections,’ connections between materials and their individual, psychological, societal use.
The works of the Berlin artist Anita Stöhr Weber frequently focus on making the invisible visible, a focus on things disregarded, using transformation processes and changes of media. In her Leinwandscans [canvas scans] group of artworks, the reflection of the medium is an immanent part of the picture’s genesis. By highlighting the materiality (and function) of the painting ground, the artist thematizes, in a mediated way, our perception of material reality and thus the invisibility of what is present (the canvas in painting) and the visibility of what is absent (the canvas in her works).
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin
Film screening of videos by Chinese contemporary artists: Cao Fei, Yang Fudong, Utopia Group and Yu Honglei
Introductory lecture (German language) and explanations by Andreas Schmid, artist and expert on contemporary art in the People's Republic of China
Although the artistic medium of video found its way into broader artistic creation in the VR China only very late in the 1990s, today it is one of the most diverse and successful artistic means of expression in the People's Republic of China. Andreas Schmid, who has been working on Chinese contemporary art since the 1980s, will give an introduction to Chinese video art before the screening.
Publications
Exhibitions
From a Poem to the Sunset
On Curbstone Jewels and Cobblestones
Chinese Contemporary Art
20 artists with around 40 works from 1990 to today