On selected dates, experienced art educators invite various discussion partners to KW in order to deepen the content of the exhibitions together with the visitors. The exchange in dialogue and with the group creates multi-layered approaches and opens up new perspectives on the exhibitions for the visitors.

Martin Wong – Malicious Mischief 

with Raoul Zöllner and Edwin Nasr

Fallen Angels

10 May 23, 5 pm

In English
Venue: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Meeting Point at the Counter 

Registration via mediation@kw-berlin.de

Participation included in the exhibition ticket. Limited capacity.

AIDS, life in prison, heroin addicts desperate for a quick fix, and the bleak, run-down street scapes of the ghetto — you would expect any painter who picks up on these subjects to confront you with the most depressing paintings. Martin Wong does the exact opposite. He romanticizes misery and iconizes outsiders — those crippled by the law, those vandalizing brick walls at night, and those who try to earn a living in underground subway stations. Fallen angels, free of any agony. None of them even blames the system. It’s just what it is. Life is a gamble and sooner or later the eight-ball will end it all. 
When Martin Wong moved to NYC he detached from the countercultural theatre groups he worked with in San Francisco. Maybe he realized that there is no need to stage anything when the streets already offer day-to-day theatricality in epic extent. It’s social realism, but it’s also much more fun than that. In this tour, I focus on the works that Martin Wong produced from this point on while Edwin Nasr will weave in the forgotten legacies of protagonists in the East Village and Lower East Side who were part of a generation of artists, which was wiped out by AIDS.

Win McCarthy – Innenportrait 

with Sarah Steiner and Norbert Witzgall

Not seeing – Taking in

5 April 23, 5 pm

In German

Venue: KW Instititute for Contemporary Art, Meeting Point at the Counter 

Registration via mediation@kw-berlin.de

Participation included in the exhibition ticket. Limited capacity.

Win McCarthy’s “Innenportrait” (“inner portrait”) – illuminated with photo lamps – the works and also me as a visitor – 

in the spotlight and yet not meant. I encounter sculptures made of glasses, I look at them and they invite me to see through them. 

They, in turn, direct the gaze to photographic works whose motifs can be familiar and foreign, inside and out and everywhere – even in my memory. 

Large triangular bodies, wedges – waiting to be placed, or that have already had their use. Something is yet to happen here or I have already missed it. 

I am in a staging – taking part, I am in a documentation – out of place. 

Something is in the making, under construction, being deconstructed and dismantled. 

Closer – zooming in, zooming out. Simple geometric shapes build a city, 

a model of a city, a model of an idea of a city, a model of a place.., 

that reminds of a city…build a model…simple geometric shapes. Spectacle creatures. Places. Memories. 

“Innenporträt” / (“Inner Portrait”) by Win McCarthy invites us into the question of what connects each of us to the world. 

In his artistic practice, he explores the subjective understanding of his surroundings, 

the relationships between people and life in the city. The feeling of emptiness is central to his work. 

In the participatory focus-tour, we take McCarthy’s texts and writing and language as a starting point for our approach to (the) “inner portrait” (“Innenporträt”). Where can we build relationships? 

Where do we see and draw parallels to our surroundings and our lives? 

How do connections emerge? What do we perceive and how does this subjective perception play out?

Karen Lamassonne – Ruido / Noise 

with Kiersten Thamm and Karen Lamassonne

15 March 23, 5 pm

Registration via mediation@kw-berlin.de

Participation included in the exhibition ticket. Limited number of participants.

Across her prolific career, Karen Lamassonne has rendered moments from her life with urgency and remarkable specificity. She’s worked with colored pencils, watercolors, collages, acrylic, photos, film, crayons, silkscreen, installations, and other methods across fifty years to savor instances of banality and transformation in her own life. But these instances creep into the universal, touching on familiar and foundational human experiences.

Ruido / Noise exhibits many of these works together for the first time. Lamassonne and Thamm take this opportunity to engage a range of pieces in conversation about the dichotomy of the personal/universal and how it engages with bodily experiences, cultural conventions, interiority, urbanity, bringing material memorials through life, and the act of reflection.