Die deutsche Version des Artikels finden Sie hier.
The twelfth edition of Positions Berlin Art Fair is looking to Asia. After sales in Hong Kong plunged, Tokyo Gendai was established in 2023 as a premiere art fair drawing galleries from abroad. But the opposite can work too. Seven new Japanese galleries are traveling to POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair, with a total of 12 Asia-based galleries attending as well as 22 from Berlin. Ex-airport Tempelhof’s hangar 6 is being renovated and the fair is taking place in hangar 7 this year, which is why it’s slightly smaller than usual. The total number of galleries has dropped from 107 to 75.
Yuki-Sis Gallery in Tokyo cleverly picks up on the location with a show of Anna Thiele’s prizewinning durational photo series observing Tempelhof Airport. The gallery also hosts painter Chika Hattori, who transforms the display walls into a massive aquarium across which fish, jellyfish, and other sea creatures swim. The motifs of this impressive bestiary are created by applying thin layers that make it seem as though the fish are glowing from within. South Korean artist YouJin Yi offers a different set of creatures. She mounts hanji on canvas, a paper manufactured using traditional processes, and draws out new effects each time by using oil, acrylic, graphite, coal, and colored pencils. On view at Galerie Kornfeld Berlin, her work invites viewers on a journey into the South Korean world of animals. One can make out swallows, apes, and sheep, as well as the characteristic limbs of a human being.
Galerie Māksla XO from Riga mounts a solo show by Ieva Iltnere titled "My Own Room". This figurative series of paintings focuses on her studio and her many sources of inspiration: bookshelves, old wedding photos, design objects, and icons of fashion and painting, as in a Cranach-esque Venus wearing a Chanel bikini. This classical terrain is expanded by Krakow-based Van Rij Gallery, showing Marcin Jedlikowski. The Polish artist works at the intersection of painting, computer graphics, and a gestural freedom typical of graffiti. His works play with grotesque biomorphic forms to create simulations of humans, objects, and situations in a hyperreality somewhere between pop culture and surrealism. His florescent paints evoke a lit monitor, while his aesthetic draws on 1980s 3D graphics.
TSEKH Gallery from Kiev picks up on this. Alongside Ievgen Petrov and Rustam Mirzoev, it shows the painterly cosmos of Mykola Bilous. His interest in cinema makes itself felt in his luminous canvases, which resemble stills in which wild scenes are played out against a pitch-black backdrop. Bilou mostly uses the primary colors red, blue, and yellow in a melancholy reference to Pop Art, ironically rendered in a 1980s Soviet Sots Art style. Hamburg-based Galerie von Wegen offers a change of scene with Danish artist Maria Bang Espersen’s abstract glass sculptures. She transcends the boundaries of glassblowing, stretching and bending the melted material to create sculptures frozen mid-movement even as the glass itself maintains a softness. Given her appealing forms and glittering colors, it comes as no surprise to learn Espersen took inspiration from a caramel factory. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has already dug in, acquiring several works for its collection. Once again, Academy Positions promises to be a highlight with its showcase of art student work. And Fashion Positions adds to the fair’s fresh feeling with fashion designs that take an artistic approach.
This article first appeared in Monopol's special issue on Berlin Art Week 2025.