Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano with Annette Frick
Die Blüten von Berlin
19 Mar - 21 May 2022
Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano with Annette Frick, Die Blüten von Berlin, Installation view at ChertLüdde, 2022, Courtesy of the Artists and ChertLüdde
As part of the first program at the gallery’s new location in Berlin Schöneberg, ChertLüdde is pleased to present Die Blüten von Berlin, an exhibition named after a song written and performed by the late drag queen Ovo Maltine (né Christoph Josten, b.1966, Rech – d. 2005, Berlin). Showcasing works by artists and partners Petrit Halilaj (b. 1986, Kostërrc, Kosovo) and Alvaro Urbano (b. 1983, Madrid, Spain), along with photographs by Annette Frick (b. 1957, Bonn, Germany), the exhibition commemorates the individual histories connected to a place as it continues to adapt, evolve and grow.
The exhibition begins with a selection of Frick’s black and white analog photographs, set against a backdrop of larger-than-life floral sculptures by Halilaj and Urbano. Made with steel yet handpainted in a delicate blue, the sculptures emulate gargantuan forget-me-nots, which in the context of the exhibition become nostalgic impressions alongside Frick’s portraits of Berlin’s queer community. Primarily taken during the 90s through the turn of the century, Frick’s photographs are marginal and experimental in both subject and style. Taking inspiration from other photographers such as Lisette Model, Frick documents queer and punk subcultures in Berlin to reveal moments of carnivalesque joy and freedom in the lives of people existing outside the heteronormative orders of urban society. On the left side of the gallery among a row of other portraits is a photo of Ovo Maltine holding a daffodil and wearing a headdress cascading downwards. The three-piece costume, designed by queer fashion designer and performer BeV StroganoV (b. 1963, Germany), was previously worn in the performance during an underwater-themed party called Tunten im Meer. Titled Ovo Maltine Luftschloß (2001), this photograph crystallizes one of the more solitary moments before a performance.
Ovo Maltine, like many of the people Frick photographed, was a dear friend of the artist. Frick’s close proximity to her subjects is evident in these images, drawing significant parallels to the candid and poignant work of American photographer Nan Goldin, whose subjects were largely her friends within the queer and trans community, sexuality, drug addiction, and the HIV crisis. On Goldin’s earlier photographs taken in Boston during the 70s, Abigail Solomon-Godeau writes:
(…) how does the insider position – in this instance, that of someone who has lived with the subjects; who loves and admires them; who shares their world – determine the reception of these images or even the nature of the content? The dressing/undressing images, for example, which could be said to signify effectively the intimacy of the relation between photographer and subject, has a specific valency with respect to cross-dressing and transvestism. In other words, whether or not one considers these to be indicative of identities, roles, masquerades, or “third genders,” the very nature of the entity “drag queen” or “transvestite” is predicated on the transforming act of dressing up. To photograph different moments in that transformation from biological male into extravagant fantasy of made-in-Hollywood femininity and glamor is to document a ritual that is itself about exteriority, appearance, performance. For it is, after all, on the level of appearance that drag queens stage their subversive theater of gender.
Like Goldin, Frick chose to photograph liminal and intimate moments in the lives of her subjects, particularly those in which they transform into their public personas. Taken after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the German reunification, these images document individuals defying social propriety and thereby contributing to an unfolding socio-cultural evolution.
Among the portraits in the first gallery hang Halilaj and Urbano’s works I never saw Blue You (dark Purple) and I never saw Blue You (Gold) (both 2022). Part of a series of two-dimensional works, these sculptures were repurposed from wallpaper found during the renovation of the new gallery space, previously the costume and decoration store Deko Behrendt. Preserving the state of disrepair the velvety purple and golden-bronze festive wallpapers were found in, the artists have kept its fraying edges to reveal the layers of wallpaper containing Deko Behrendt’s seventy-year history.
I never saw Blue You examines the conceptual nature of the backdrop, and by relation the history of landscape photography. Formerly the decorative elements of an interior space, the wallpaper has been recontextualized as an individual work. Departing from the aesthetics of Frick’s photographs, the sculptures draw nearer to certain visual traditions such as early photographic collodion processes. Experimenting with this medium could produce foggy or clouded appearances that sometimes leaned towards the abstract. These early trials, uniquely dependent on time and chemistry, are in some ways like the decades-old wallpaper revisited for the I never saw Blue You series.
The notion that “the landscape is never a neutral space– its multilayers are connected with history, social connections, political decisions and emotional networks,” extends as well to the broader view of the artists’ joint practice. Often facile and decorative at first glance, a closer gaze reveals work that is emotive and political, a revelation of hidden beauty that is brought from the background to the fore. In the words of Éduoard Glissant, “to say ‘self’ is to say ‘landscape’, because landscapes are not backdrops. Landscapes are characters and landscapes change and differ.” I never saw Blue You reveals itself to be a nebulous form of documentation, uncovering an environment that has witnessed decades of actions and developments.
Further directing our attention towards a more complicated understanding of the landscape, the gallery space is interjected with a blooming cherry blossom by Halilaj and Urbano that hangs from the ceiling. Part of a series of sculptures that, when combined, form an enormous bouquet, 10th of May 2016 (Cherry) (2020) recalls the date a significant exchange took place between the couple. This series first appeared in the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid, during the summer of 2020 when the artists planned to marry. Initially conceived as wedding ornaments, the flowers maintain their stage of initial bloom. In their amplified, intrinsic meanings of love, care and the need for togetherness, Halilaj and Urbano’s flowers remain expectant, fixed in a state of open possibilities.
The exhibition begins with a selection of Frick’s black and white analog photographs, set against a backdrop of larger-than-life floral sculptures by Halilaj and Urbano. Made with steel yet handpainted in a delicate blue, the sculptures emulate gargantuan forget-me-nots, which in the context of the exhibition become nostalgic impressions alongside Frick’s portraits of Berlin’s queer community. Primarily taken during the 90s through the turn of the century, Frick’s photographs are marginal and experimental in both subject and style. Taking inspiration from other photographers such as Lisette Model, Frick documents queer and punk subcultures in Berlin to reveal moments of carnivalesque joy and freedom in the lives of people existing outside the heteronormative orders of urban society. On the left side of the gallery among a row of other portraits is a photo of Ovo Maltine holding a daffodil and wearing a headdress cascading downwards. The three-piece costume, designed by queer fashion designer and performer BeV StroganoV (b. 1963, Germany), was previously worn in the performance during an underwater-themed party called Tunten im Meer. Titled Ovo Maltine Luftschloß (2001), this photograph crystallizes one of the more solitary moments before a performance.
Ovo Maltine, like many of the people Frick photographed, was a dear friend of the artist. Frick’s close proximity to her subjects is evident in these images, drawing significant parallels to the candid and poignant work of American photographer Nan Goldin, whose subjects were largely her friends within the queer and trans community, sexuality, drug addiction, and the HIV crisis. On Goldin’s earlier photographs taken in Boston during the 70s, Abigail Solomon-Godeau writes:
(…) how does the insider position – in this instance, that of someone who has lived with the subjects; who loves and admires them; who shares their world – determine the reception of these images or even the nature of the content? The dressing/undressing images, for example, which could be said to signify effectively the intimacy of the relation between photographer and subject, has a specific valency with respect to cross-dressing and transvestism. In other words, whether or not one considers these to be indicative of identities, roles, masquerades, or “third genders,” the very nature of the entity “drag queen” or “transvestite” is predicated on the transforming act of dressing up. To photograph different moments in that transformation from biological male into extravagant fantasy of made-in-Hollywood femininity and glamor is to document a ritual that is itself about exteriority, appearance, performance. For it is, after all, on the level of appearance that drag queens stage their subversive theater of gender.
Like Goldin, Frick chose to photograph liminal and intimate moments in the lives of her subjects, particularly those in which they transform into their public personas. Taken after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the German reunification, these images document individuals defying social propriety and thereby contributing to an unfolding socio-cultural evolution.
Among the portraits in the first gallery hang Halilaj and Urbano’s works I never saw Blue You (dark Purple) and I never saw Blue You (Gold) (both 2022). Part of a series of two-dimensional works, these sculptures were repurposed from wallpaper found during the renovation of the new gallery space, previously the costume and decoration store Deko Behrendt. Preserving the state of disrepair the velvety purple and golden-bronze festive wallpapers were found in, the artists have kept its fraying edges to reveal the layers of wallpaper containing Deko Behrendt’s seventy-year history.
I never saw Blue You examines the conceptual nature of the backdrop, and by relation the history of landscape photography. Formerly the decorative elements of an interior space, the wallpaper has been recontextualized as an individual work. Departing from the aesthetics of Frick’s photographs, the sculptures draw nearer to certain visual traditions such as early photographic collodion processes. Experimenting with this medium could produce foggy or clouded appearances that sometimes leaned towards the abstract. These early trials, uniquely dependent on time and chemistry, are in some ways like the decades-old wallpaper revisited for the I never saw Blue You series.
The notion that “the landscape is never a neutral space– its multilayers are connected with history, social connections, political decisions and emotional networks,” extends as well to the broader view of the artists’ joint practice. Often facile and decorative at first glance, a closer gaze reveals work that is emotive and political, a revelation of hidden beauty that is brought from the background to the fore. In the words of Éduoard Glissant, “to say ‘self’ is to say ‘landscape’, because landscapes are not backdrops. Landscapes are characters and landscapes change and differ.” I never saw Blue You reveals itself to be a nebulous form of documentation, uncovering an environment that has witnessed decades of actions and developments.
Further directing our attention towards a more complicated understanding of the landscape, the gallery space is interjected with a blooming cherry blossom by Halilaj and Urbano that hangs from the ceiling. Part of a series of sculptures that, when combined, form an enormous bouquet, 10th of May 2016 (Cherry) (2020) recalls the date a significant exchange took place between the couple. This series first appeared in the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid, during the summer of 2020 when the artists planned to marry. Initially conceived as wedding ornaments, the flowers maintain their stage of initial bloom. In their amplified, intrinsic meanings of love, care and the need for togetherness, Halilaj and Urbano’s flowers remain expectant, fixed in a state of open possibilities.