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April 13, 2011 – Review
"The Bell Show" at Lüttgenmeijer and "The Gong Show" at Micky Schubert, Berlin
Ana Teixeira Pinto
“The Bell Show” and “The Gong Show,” curated by Dieter Roelstraete, is a two-fold exhibition marking the second collaboration between adjacent galleries in the middle of Berlin Tiergarten, Micky Schubert and Lüttgenmeijer. Illustrating their titles, the shows respectively feature works concerning either gongs or bells.
In Lüttgenmeijer’s “The Bell Show” some works are grandiose, like the Teutonic Vertigo-Glocken (Vertigo Bells) (1997) by Carsten Höller. Some are disarmingly tender like The Step When I Forget What I Thought My Calling Was (2011) by Hadley+Maxwell, who also did the most allegorical work of the show, a cryptic memento mori, Away, as in “For Passing Away is the Figure of this World” (2010). Other works appear to be ironic juxtapositions of heroism and advertising imagery, like that of Ruth Ewan or Lothar Hempel. The selection has a histrionic and excessive touch.
“The Gong Show,” just next door, seemed to gather together works of refined containment and minimal nuance. Most are literal, like Wolfgang Tillmans’s Gong (2007); or Zin Taylor’s Black Stool (Darkened Lump) and Black Stool (Nub of Rug) (2011). A few are archival, like Pierre Bismuth’s A Brief Historical Survey of Continuity in the J. Arthur Rank Organization (2011) or Mark Soo’s Noisemaker No. …