Plan to be in Berlin anytime soon? If so, you are in luck – the exhibition Freeway Balconies, at the Deutsche Guggenheim has been extended and will not close until October 10th. This group exhibition curated by photographer Collier Schorr (Season 2) features 19 emerging and established artists, including Art21-featured artist Raymond Pettibon (also Season 2).
This exhibition may be considered close to a particular kind of self-portrait as the works are arranged among a selection of Schorr’s own photographs. As such, Schorr sets up antagonistic relationships: spectacle vs. voyeurism, identity vs. identification, performance art vs. Hollywood cult and alternative culture vs. popular. Such relationships, often seemingly contradictory, have the ability to ignite a conversation, get the mind juicing and sometimes even the body heated. There is no certain outcome of such matches and in the name of art, who would want a finite answer? It all depends on what else of hers you’ve seen.
Schorr writes, “After reading Allen Ginsberg’s poem I had a fantasy…Ginsberg is at a gas station in the south and picks up a stranded traveler who he thinks is part of the Black Panther movement, but actually he is a Hollywood actor hoping to get into Hollywood. I guess that the conflation of identity is at the heart of this exhibition.”
Meanwhile, if you are unable to make it to Berlin anytime soon, don’t fret; there’s something for you as well. The book that accompanies the exhibition is a way to visually continue the round-table discussion that drives Schorr’s artmaking and curating.
On a closing note, here is a photograph (included in this exhibition) of and by Collier Schorr in a pose reminiscent of Hollywood favorite Marlon Brando:
