When compared with the frenetic turnaround of the art world, it’s astounding to think that this latest hanging at the Boros Collection will be staying up until 2026 – you have to feel for the tour guides.
As you would imagine, there is a bleakness to this former Second World War bunker. The lack of sunlight gives the impression that you’re miles under the earth; time stops here, as Alicja Kwade’s sporadically turning clock makes clear.
You’ll be familiar with a lot of the featured artists here, the high-flying Berlin residents bunkering down in this time capsule of contemporary art. At points the walls are a whopping three metres thick, and the rooms roughened textures perhaps encourage the tendency to choose slick, clean, conceptually-tight artworks.
Anne Imhof’s scratched canvases, sound-tracked by crushing death metal chords encapsulate this neat, alchemical material interplay. There are some delightful surprises; Jean-Marie Appriou’s figures are a fairytale in themselves; the crippled mannequins of Berenice Olmedo are exquisitely distressing. Alienation from our own bodies is the theme of this hang, which partly explains Anna Uddenberg’s tedious selfie-loving statues.
Nonetheless, it’s a stylish and well-arranged collection of works that is at its best when it sidelines en vogue names in favour of its own peculiar oddness.
- Boros Collection, Mitte Through 2026, by appointment only
