WINGS

Bernd Reiter, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Robert Rauschenberg und Banksy The gigantic rear wing of a Mig-21 is in the center of the exhibition WINGS, which presents a portfolio of provocative works of art by world-famous artists at the Hotel Mond in Berlin. The striking tail fin of the Russian Mig-21 has Bernd Reiter built up to a huge installation. The part of a fighting machine stands in the middle of the exhibition space as a silent threat and tells of the past, where it has caused damage and caused pain. Now and now, dismantled into pieces and seemingly innocent and harmlessly mutated into a work of art, the grand piano documents a mysterious story with an almost aesthetic and radiant aura. As a political memorial, it is primarily representative of grievances in current crisis areas and interacts with the thoughts of their beholder. Opposite the Mig-21 rear wing are works by Roy Lichtenstein, based on comics as a raw material, such as his Whaam on All American Men of War. They catapult the viewer into the 60s world of energy, violence, eroticism and modernity and yet are not war stories. These are abstract images whose bursts of fire remind us of Pollock's action pictures, which the viewer has to explore for himself. The exhibited works by Robert Rauschenberg also engage in a direct dialogue with Reiter's war machine. The mirrored aluminum of his Phantom and Night Shade series creates a spooky attention that characterizes Rauschenberg's fascination with texture, surface, and reflection. His works are to be equated to a television channel in which one can experience the diversity of the consumer world - from war to science - without having to switch over. Between Rauschenberg's and Reiter's works a very individual tension arises between the whole and the individual parts of an extraordinary story.

Like Bernd Reiter, Banksy is also a political artist and activist whose works are consumer, social and System-critical to illuminate the world as a cartoon, therefore are morally judgmental. His work Rude Copper is reminiscent of the old bobbies on the beat and mocks British policing and their attitude and arrogance while Radar Rat is a pure anagram of art. Contrary to the exaggerated work of Banksy, Damien Hirst is dedicated to the timeless themes of death, religion or love and markets the consumer culture for everyone, although the boundaries of the question of who the consumer and who the product is are fluid. The spin pictures shown in the exhibition, which go back to Hirst's youth in the 1960s, he describes as psychedelic compositions and as "childish ... in the positive sense of the word". Keith Haring's Radiant Baby, also called Radiant Child or Radiant Christ, first appeared in his work as a subway artist, using it as his trademark or signature. Haring described the radiant baby as the "purest and most positive experience of human existence". It is largely symbolic of Haring's hope for the future, but has an ambiguous meaning: the viewer is not sure whether the baby is consumed by the flames or saves humanity. While Reiter's war machine Mig-21 actually destroys people, the viewer can at least give in to the hope that Haring's radiant child could save the humans. The rudder, oars, wing flaps create resistance and cause the aircraft to change direction or altitude. Thus, the exhibition WINGS creates a controlled art shock and combines postmodern consumer illusions with contemporary, political-activist irony. The resulting break is meant to upset and calm at the same time and help generate a new awareness of authenticity in the self-branded world. Öffnungszeiten: Dienstag – Freitag 11-18 Uhr, Samstag 11-16 Uhr