Fashion Positions. Selva Huygens. Mixed media. (Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

Positions Berlin Art Fair at Tempelhof

This year, the best part of Positions Berlin Art Fair is Fashion, a special section showcasing twenty local designers and collectives (the other special section is Academia Positions, serving as a platform for emerging artists and galleries). The reason might be that fashion is trying to make a leap out of everyday applicability to a more abstract level, while ‘real’ art, exhibited at this and many other fairs, is trying to make a reverse move from the higher level into the Procrustean bed of everyday applicability.

Because of these efforts, fashion here is gaining appeal, while traditional contemporary art is losing it.

There’s also something like a flea market in the back of the Fashion booths: Berlin’s genius loci at work! Plus, there are lots of beautiful people around this part of the fair, sophisticatedly weird, per the city’s highest standards.

As per the fair itself, there’s not much to be said. The galleries that yours truly always go to in Berlin are not present. But there are quite a few Japanese stands, and, unexpectedly, some good Sumi ink drawings are on display.

Natalia Zourabova. Summer. 2021, Oil on canvas. Wannsee Contemporary. (Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

Highlights: Günther Uecker (1930-2025) – graphic sheets at MUK. Natalia Zurabova at Wannsee Contemporary. Anna Thiele with skiers (resembling Alexander Gronsky’s, roughly the same size, too) – €2,200 for a print, edition of 20. A gallery in Halle (Saale) called Erik Baussman features a drawing by Sigmar Polke, several photographs by René Burri, a color lithograph by Neo Rauch, and other works. Of course, there are Warhol and Lichtenstein silkscreens for ridiculous amounts of money, as you’ll find at any art fair.

Crowds of people, some of them wet. Even before the professional hours ended (at 6 PM Thursday), it started pouring. A glass of wine at the bar costs €8.50 plus a €1 deposit.

In general, it’s nice to be in Tempelhof without any particular purpose. The old airport is a monument in and of itself, with 16-meter-high ceilings and all.

The fair is getting better by the year, actually.

Bruce Nauman at Konrad Fischer Galerie

Bruce Nauman. 2 bronze heads hung with bundled, damaged or packrat-chewed wax fish. 2025. Bronze, wax, wire, steel cable, and metal grid. (Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

It is Nauman’s 20^th solo exhibition at Konrad Fischer, with his first having been shown back in 1968, soon after the gallery’s start. The namesake gallerist, a.k.a. Konrad Lueg (1939-1996), who was not only an avid promoter of the newest American art in Europe but also a great champion of Gerhard Richter and other new German artists, is long since dead; the institution itself has moved its headquarters from Düsseldorf to a historical five-story fabric in Berlin’s center. Bruce Nauman (b. 1941), in the meantime, has evolved to be one of the most renowned artists in the world. There are a couple of large-scale pieces at Hamburger Bahnhof and at least one video by him at the Neue Nationalgalerie (local contemporary art museums). The last time I experienced a dedicated exhibition by Nauman was in Venice in 2022 at Punta della Dogana, where the maître revisited his early video installations, which were a breakthrough back in the 60s, despite humble production means (Contrapposto Studies). Now he has all the means that there are and puts them to use, too. Great news that at 84, he is not only revisiting but still creating new art and is more than capable of mustering a five-story building.

There’s still a Contrapposto-infused video installation in the center, a 1-hour-long 3D video titled Beckett’s Chair Portrait Rotated (2025), which depicts the author slowly moving with a chair through his workshop, displayed at a 90-degree angle. But around it, below and above, a different tide starts to build. Drawings, sculptures, and sharp shadows thereof, all dedicated to freshwater fishes, starting from nearly abstract sketches and becoming more and more exact, sometimes counterweighted with dead human heads. This fish meta-installation culminates in the top two stories, where the multi-colored whirlwind of wax trout is mounted below a video of rainbow sky. (Fish/rainbow, 2025).

Bruce Nauman, Fish/rainbow. 2025. Wax, threaded rods, plaster, video, loop. (Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

A museum-grade show, to say the least.

Issy Wood at Schinkel Pavillion

Issy Wood. Go, daddy! (I saw you rolling), 2025. Oil on linen. (Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

 Despite being named after Berlin’s most famous classicist-turned-early-modern architect, this octagonal venue was built in 1969 by Richard Paulick. It sits next to the historical site where Schinkel’s prominent Bauakademie (1832-1836) once was – and will be reconstructed in some form, someday. Anyway, it’s a non-profit contemporary art institution (a Verein, so basically a union) of high esteem. For an artist, being shown here is indeed a quality stamp of sorts.

Issy Wood. DINNER 2, 2025. Oil on linen. (Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

Issy Wood (b. 1993) is a US artist based in London, and one of the youngest to have ever entered this octagon. The first floor is paintings. This would have been photorealism, were it reality as seen by a camera, but it is reality as seen by a viewer on a smartphone screen. It can be dubbed iPhotorealism. Mundane objects, such as shoes and tableware, as well as memes, all appear pixilated and blown up. The second floor shows an installation of music instruments (MUS1C, 2025), covered in the same repetitive memes, plus an audio installation playing (SHINKEL WAV, 2025).

Okay, zoomer.

Petrit Halilaj in Hamburger Bahnhof

Petrit Halilaj. RU (Aves Migrantis), 2017/22. Wood, earth, glue, brass, resin, 79 sculptures of different sizes. Installation view. (Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

Petrit Halilaj (b. 1986) represented Kosovo in the 55^th Venice biennial in 2013 and later obtained the Jury’s special mention during the 57th biennial in 2017 (Arsenale, main project). A very well-exhibited and established artist, despite his relatively young age. He’s producing visually appealing, while conceptually and politically charged works: giant moths made from kilims originating from his local area, huge pear blossoms (pear tree also being characteristic to Kosovo) presented in Hamburger Bahnhof’s permanent exhibition (together with his husband, Alvaro Urbano).

That said, Halilaj is no stranger to the German capital. He lives and works here, as well as in Italy and his home, Kosovo.  Still, this is his first solo museum show in Berlin, titled “An Opera Out of Time.” Full of recurring motives – moths, flowers, ancient pieces of pottery that he seeks out in corn fields in Kosovo and makes into migratory birds (RU) – it also presents several large-scale installations from different years. Yugoslavia-born, Halilaj fled the country with his parents during the Kosovo war in 1999, at the age of 13, and started drawing at a refugee camp in Albania. Thus, the motifs of migration and home rebuilding are prominent in his oeuvre. Shkrepetima (2018; flash in Albanian) is an installation dedicated to the House of Culture in his hometown, Runik. It was staged as a theatrical work presented there, and here remade into a site-specific installation, consisting of a curtain, a painting, and wooden props, as well as wall parts and salvaged tile pieces from the destroyed buildings. Since then, the House of Culture has been rebuilt, due in part to Halilaj’s engagement.

Petrit Halilaj. Syrigana, 2025. Mixed media, site-specific installation (fragment). Installation view. (Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

Syrigana is a three-thousand-year-old village on the border with Serbia, whence Halilaj’s grandmother comes from. He has developed an opera about this place. Syrigana is perceived as a paradise lost and then re-entered by Fox and Rooster, two lovers. Two people from totally different backgrounds can co-exist and even be in love. In reality, Serbian, Albanian, and other communities have coexisted in the region for a long time, so there is hope for future improvements. The opera was staged in the village in the open air on June 29, 2025. In the museum, it has also been re-worked into an installation.

Sounds all too political, but it’s fun to watch and explore.