It’s not really a weekend. Because of May Day, it’s already 4 days anyway but people keep stretching it out and frankly now the “weekend” is at least 10 days. And there was such a lot to see. And there was such a lot I wish I hadn’t seen too. The major galleries all made a major effort, with Pae White at neugerriemschneider, Liam Gillick at Esther Schipper, Lynn Chadwick’s “Beast” series at Blain Southern, David Claerbout at Johnen Galerie, Wolfgang Laib at Buchmann Galerie, Fischli & Weiss at Sprüth Magers, Gordon Matta-Clark at Thomas Schulte and Yang Jiechang at ARNDT, among others. But there was also a lot of boring art at second tier galleries – not because they are second tier but because they played it safe. Maybe the pressure of rising rental in Berlin is beginning to affect Berlin’s free spirit. I wont mention names (no, really) but the worst…maybe one of the worst…was a huge van Gogh sunflower mess at…and this horrible pasty, naked, sour, gangrenous nude at….

Anyway, this article is just an introduction. Expect an end of month postcard from Berlin, with reports on many exhibitions, including some of those mentioned above.

And China was very present. There is the huge Ai Weiwei retrospective at Martin Gropius Bau (over 70,000 visitors so far – my review will be out shortly). There is “The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing” exhibition curated by Thomas Eller, Andreas Schmid, Guo Xiaoyan and organised by Yu Zhang (expect our report on that show soon too).

For the Nicolas Provost film, here is the youtube link.

Then there is Momentum Worldwide’s multi-location “Pandamonium” (sic) exhibition and program of video art from Shanghai, with Double Fly, Feng Bingyi, Hu Jieming, Hu Weiyi, Lu Yang, Qiu Anxiong, Ming Wong, Xu Wenkai, Xu Zhen, MadeIn, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhang Ding, Zhang Peili and Zhou Xiaohu, curated by Li Zhenhua and David Elliott (report coming soon). And of course the Yang Jiechang show at ARNDT and I even curated a small show of Yan Pijie at independent space, orangelab.

My favorite show from Gallery Weekend Berlin was Liam Gillick at Esther Schipper, the exhibition an amazingly compact distillation of so many themes Gillick has worked with over the years.