In tandem with “Ich kenne kein Weekend. Archive and Collection René Block,” a double-venue exhibition recognizing the work of gallerist, curator, and collector René Block organized in Berlin this autumn, art-agenda presents a three-part feature on Block. Parts I and II (available here and here) consist of an interview led by Luca Cerizza, while Part III, an introduction to the current Berlin exhibitions, written by Eva Scharrer, follows. On September 15, 1964, René Block opened his gallery in West Berlin—thus opening a new chapter in art history. Fifty-one years later to the day, “Ich kenne kein Weekend. Archive and Collection René Block” is presented across two Berlin institutions: the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and the Berlinische Galerie. Likely the first-ever retrospective of a curator, it looks back at more than five decades of exhibition-making between the art market and cultural politics. A publisher, dealer, facilitator, networker, pioneer of artists’ multiples, and curator, Block has organized more than 200 exhibitions and at least as many events, always shifting public perspective from the center to the margins. Entering each exhibition, one first encounters an enlarged drawing, a mind map consisting of a series of big and small circles, connected by various single or reciprocal …

In tandem with “Ich kenne kein Weekend: Archive and Collection René Block,” a double-venue exhibition recognizing the work of gallerist, curator, and collector René Block organized in Berlin this autumn, art-agenda presents a three-part feature on Block. Part I and II consist of an interview led by Luca Cerizza, while Part III is an introduction to the current Berlin exhibitions, written by Eva Scharrer. Part I follows, Part II will be published on December 15, and Part III on December 22, 2015. The first time I met René Block with the proposal of writing a profile on his work as a gallerist for art-agenda, he mentioned a forthcoming exhibition and immediately took out a sheet of A4 paper on which he had drawn a colorful map. Composed of a series of circles of different colors connected by arrows, this sketch visualized 50 years of Block’s career, from the opening of Galerie Block in Berlin in 1964 to the planning stages, in 2014, of a double-venue Berlin exhibition on his life’s work. Almost one year later, on September 16, 2015, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) and the Berlinische Galerie opened the two-part retrospective “Ich kenne kein Weekend: Archive and Collection René Block,” …