Hallen #4: Artwork Highlights
Hallen #4 returned to a former iron foundry in Berlin from 9 to 17 September 2023.
The art festival saw 19 galleries participate, including spaces from Cologne and Düsseldorf, in an art fair style display.
Galleries including Jan Kaps, Esther Schipper, EBENSPERGER, ChertLüdde, and alexander levy, staged presentations across the 9,000 square metre exhibition hall. Alongside Hallen's signature presentation, the festival expanded to five exhibitions as well as a series of talks.
This year, the festival showcased its largest edition yet and brought particular focus to large-scale installation art. Below, Ocula Advisors select their favourite sculpture, painting, installation, and photograph at Hallen #4.
Ugo Rondinone's moonrise. east. april (2005) at Esther Schipper
Ugo Rondinone's moonrise. east. april (2005) is one of 12 works representing each calendar month in the artist's 'moonrise. east' series (2005–2006).
The sculpture depicts an expressive face with a downturned smile and two hollow eyes—one squinting uncomfortably. Both the squinting eye and the mouth are in the shape of a crescent moon.
Rondinone's hand is prominent in the unsettling figure's uneven surface, demonstrating the artist's manipulation of clay before the sculpture was cast in aluminium and painted.
The work, which measures nearly two metres tall, looks particularly striking, displayed at the heart of the building's industrial architecture.
Marcel Dzama's Dance Me Here In The Night (2023) at Sies + Höke
It's always a joy to encounter Marcel Dzama's whimsical paintings. Düsseldorf-based gallery Sies + Höke indulges us with a solo presentation of work by the Canadian artist at Hallen #4.
On view, Dance Me Here In The Night (2023) unravels a fairy-tale world featuring imagery that mixes the real and imagined, where Dzama depicts a masked figure dancing under a starry sky with typical flamboyance.
The scene, veiled in inky blue and adorned with glowing stars and polka dots, sits somewhere between a dream and a memory.
Though some figures feel familiar, the painting is peppered with fantastical details, which has an entirely absorbing effect when observing the work.
John M Armleder's Voltes II (2003) at Mehdi Chouakri
John M Armleder is dedicated to reinvestigating the nature of art and its power.
Berlin-based gallery Mehdi Chouakri brings the Swiss artist's candy-coloured light installation, Voltes II (2003), to Hallen #4 in a dramatic display against the dark, factory-like backdrop.
There is an inherent exuberance to Armleder's large-scale light installations, as they look to playfully reimagine how we engage with and experience contemporary art.
The fluorescent installation, made up of a series of multicoloured circles, evokes the dazzling lights of a fun fair and recalls a carefree time of amusement and leisure.
Annette Frick's Schlangengöttin (Snake Goddess) (1990) at ChertLüdde
Annette Frick is known for her photographs that document queer and punk subcultures in Germany.
ChertLüdde presents the Berlin-based artist's Schlangengöttin (Snake Goddess) (1990), five large-format black-and-white analogue photographs of a female figure. In each, the model wears nylon tights torn into a sheer top, adopting different poses, some exposing her figure more dramatically than others.
Frick's powerful portraits adjust the rigid pre-existing narratives around the way women are looked at in art and mythology.
While exploring a softness in the female figure, they also highlight the complexity of body politics in contemporary society.
Main image: John M Armleder, Voltes II (2003). Exhibition view: Hallen #4, Berlin (9–17 September 2023). Courtesy the artist and Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin. Photo: © Devid Gualandris.
