After getting the edges right in the orange painting, I decided to try and look up the galleries that are listed in the surrounding area, but it isn't as easy as looking up the address and hey presto there it is. Berlin has the most difficult street numbering system of anywhere I've been to with the exception of Seoul. In Berlin the numbers start at one and continue consecutively like that all the way down one side until the other end and then they go back up sequential until that end so one and say six hundred and thirty face each other. The rub is that you have to know how long the street is and which way to start off. With wide streets it is a real pain because one can't easily check what the numbers are doing across the way. So geared to insider knowledge, interesting as always. One gallery listed on Oderberger Strasse, after walking up and down a bit, turned out to be a person's name on an apartment block. No answer on the phone or the doorbell. Well, maybe another day. Then walking down, a long way trying to find 176 Schönhauser Allee, I passed all sorts of intriguing shops: a tatooist whose premises were lined with richly coloured silk hangings and gave the impression of an Eastern cult; a plumber's where a girl had on nothing but a towel and was being photographed in the bath in the window; a shop that was for used clothing and objects but with everything set out so exquisitely that it made me wonder if they were new things designed to look second-hand, but it was closed so I couldn't check; a building with classical column that was so massive it looked unbelievable, and turned out to be a school; a massage and sauna establishment down a courtyard; a vivid red brick Roman Catholic African church that was so angular and odd that it made me wonder if parts of it had been bombed away and they just joined the standing parts with the dome; a ‘Natur' shop that had bolts of cloth with most peculiar old fashioned lumpy clothes hanging that had been handmade there with no attention to to-days or yesterdays fashions so that wearing them I suppose one would look ‘natur; but no 176. Except that this plastered over with graffiti and fly bills boarded up wall, what is that? Look it has number 176. Going up the stairs that were covered in graffiti, one came into a conclave of abandoned buildings around a little park. There is a tiny workers cafe in the corner that is open for lunches mid week and the rest is closed but is a biergarten in the summer. So where is the gallery. Asking the man who was clearing up rubble he said ‘ya, ya,' and waved to the back where there was one of those red and white stripy keep out tapes strung over the derelict public toilets, and yes a small sign with a red arrow on it. Past some construction work and a pile of rubble one then voilà, came out into one of those fabulous renovations of what had been a brewery, and now is the úber chic Akira Ikeda gallery with a massive red steel Mark Di Suvero sculpture outside. Wow. But they don't make it easy for anybody.
