Berlin (i)
This time last week I was on day five of a six-day trip to Berlin. About now I was making my way from Zimmer Straße to Linden Straße before heading back to August Straße and on to Rosa Luxembourg Straße. It was my first time in Berlin – what an amazing interesting place.
It was my second Biennale experience (the first being Venice last year) and it could hardly have been more different. I wasn’t expecting a repeat of Venice in fact I don’t know what I was expecting. What I found was a vibrant young art scene in which the biennale seemed just one aspect.
The first few days of my time in Berlin were spent with Francois (an art-lover I met in Venice and have met with a few times at shows and fairs in London). It was great to have him meet me at the airport and whisk me off to the biennale as soon as I’d dropped my bag off at the hotel – though I have to say I’ll never attempt to ‘do’ the biennale in eight hours again. He was quite pleased that we’d seen it all (save for a video in the KunstWerk basement), I felt that I hadn’t had sufficient time in each location let alone with individual artworks. It was an interesting insight into how he sees art. Francois has a job that involves a lot of international client liaison and he’s able to schedule meetings on Fridays and Mondays which gives him the weekend to visit shows, fairs and biennales that ‘conveniently’ fall when he makes these business trips.
I had every intention of going back to at least two of the biennale venues; after all I had two and a half days to myself after Francois left on Sunday afternoon. In the event there was so much else to see that I didn’t make it back to any of them.
On Saturday Francois had arranged for us to visit Sammlung Hoffmann – a private collection of contemporary art in a specifically designed private apartment. It was the first time I’ve visited a real private collection and seen museum quality work on the walls of a private residence. Most of the rooms have no evidence of being at all domestic, perhaps this is what made the dinning room with it’s table, chairs, furnishings and Polke one of the most fascinating. Beyond that was a less formal room with a couple of high chairs and some dried orange peel twisted around the architectural banister – this our guide informed us was a piece by Mrs Hoffman and her grandchildren. As if on cue a door opened and Mrs Hoffmann stepped though. She was, of course, the perfect host and hoped that we’d enjoyed visiting her collection; she spoke at some length about the biennale and the Berlin scene before thanking us and wishing us a pleasant afternoon.
