Inside a Dark Store
Inside a Dark Store is a project exploring the dynamics of self-organization, class, and production in the visual arts in parallel to the rising presence of the gig economy in Berlin.
Featuring works from artists Gülsüm Güler, Erin Mitchell, Joshua Schwebel, Markus Zimmermann, and Vika Kirchenbauer the group exhibition runs from 12.2022–02.2023 at Kreuzberg Pavillon in Berlin (DE).
Curation: Heiko Pfreundt and Lisa Susanne Schorm
Photos: Joe Clark
Funded by Presentations of Contemporary Visual Art of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe
Inside a Dark Store is a project exploring the dynamics of self-organization, class, and production in the visual arts in parallel to the rising presence of the gig economy in Berlin.
Featuring works from artists Gülsüm Güler, Erin Mitchell, Joshua Schwebel, Markus Zimmermann, and Vika Kirchenbauer the group exhibition runs from 12.2022–02.2023 at Kreuzberg Pavillon in Berlin (DE).
Curation: Heiko Pfreundt and Lisa Susanne Schorm
Photos: Joe Clark
Funded by Presentations of Contemporary Visual Art of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe
Inside a Dark Store is a project that enters the shielded spaces of the new economy in
our neighborhoods and addresses the uncanny secrecy of self-organization and class in the
visual arts. Darkness, as in Dark Store, does not necessarily mean the absence of light. It is
about the palpable presence of social matters left in darkness when it comes to the
production, exhibition and discussion of contemporary art.
The project addresses current class discussions in visual arts and considers their questions in relation to class consciousness, long-term collaborations and healing practices of self-organized artist spaces and initiatives.
For more than ten years, Gülsüm Güler has been practicing kitchen psychology in her nomadically run dinner club TDD (Tischlein Deck dich) by creating action spaces together with guest chefs from the respective neighborhood. As an artist, she considers her collaborative practice a safe space that allows her to engage in her work as a portrait photographer to approach actors from different communities who participate in the collective process of their cooking actions.
Joshua Schwebel's work “The Employee” was a yearlong collaboration between the artist and Forest City Gallery artist-run center in London, Ontario. His conceptual work consisted of obtaining arts funding and contracting a supplementary worker to perform as a grant-writer on behalf of the artist-run center. In 2019, Schwebel was nominated for the Berlin Art Prize and used his production budget to provide Kreuzberg Pavillon in his work The Ground durably with a new floor, made of recycled wood from nearby construction sites.
Erin Mitchell's new work follows up to her site-specific window installation A Prime Dystopia from 2021 which reimagined Kreuzberg Pavillon as displaced by speculative foreign investment. Styled as a teaser for a newly launching startup, the space ́s appearance was remade to mimic the influx of grocery delivery “dark stores” in storefronts in the surrounding area. The link to her work was redirected to a collaborative archive chronicling international reporting on the exploitation of low-wage, precarious, and gig economy workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and their self-organization efforts in Berlin and beyond.
Markus Zimmermann has been active as an initiator of projects in overlapping art genres since 2013. He regards the creation of space as a sculptural process and was most recently active in this context with the sculpture group Art Ashram at documenta fifteen. His expansive works often employ recycled and site specific material, and deal with the dichotomy between ego and self, body and space, organism and architecture. Inside the Dark Store, his work expands on the use of delivery transportation materials and questions the extent to which an art exhibition is an exhibition of means of production.
Inside a Dark Store is an exhibition in two parts. The second part with Vika Kirchenbauer and a public program will take place in February 2023.
Inside a Dark Store
Gülsüm Güler
Erin Mitchell
Joshua Schwebel
Markus Zimmermann
Vika Kirchenbauer
12.2022–02.2023
Opening Sat. 17.12.22, 6-10 pm.
Open Sat, Sun. 1-6 pm (except 24.-25.12. and 31.12-01.01)
'The employee' by Joshua Schwebel is visible from the outside, every day from 4-10 pm (Pause between 24.12.22 - 06.01.23)
Funded by Presentations of Contemporary Visual Art of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe
The project addresses current class discussions in visual arts and considers their questions in relation to class consciousness, long-term collaborations and healing practices of self-organized artist spaces and initiatives.
For more than ten years, Gülsüm Güler has been practicing kitchen psychology in her nomadically run dinner club TDD (Tischlein Deck dich) by creating action spaces together with guest chefs from the respective neighborhood. As an artist, she considers her collaborative practice a safe space that allows her to engage in her work as a portrait photographer to approach actors from different communities who participate in the collective process of their cooking actions.
Joshua Schwebel's work “The Employee” was a yearlong collaboration between the artist and Forest City Gallery artist-run center in London, Ontario. His conceptual work consisted of obtaining arts funding and contracting a supplementary worker to perform as a grant-writer on behalf of the artist-run center. In 2019, Schwebel was nominated for the Berlin Art Prize and used his production budget to provide Kreuzberg Pavillon in his work The Ground durably with a new floor, made of recycled wood from nearby construction sites.
Erin Mitchell's new work follows up to her site-specific window installation A Prime Dystopia from 2021 which reimagined Kreuzberg Pavillon as displaced by speculative foreign investment. Styled as a teaser for a newly launching startup, the space ́s appearance was remade to mimic the influx of grocery delivery “dark stores” in storefronts in the surrounding area. The link to her work was redirected to a collaborative archive chronicling international reporting on the exploitation of low-wage, precarious, and gig economy workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and their self-organization efforts in Berlin and beyond.
Markus Zimmermann has been active as an initiator of projects in overlapping art genres since 2013. He regards the creation of space as a sculptural process and was most recently active in this context with the sculpture group Art Ashram at documenta fifteen. His expansive works often employ recycled and site specific material, and deal with the dichotomy between ego and self, body and space, organism and architecture. Inside the Dark Store, his work expands on the use of delivery transportation materials and questions the extent to which an art exhibition is an exhibition of means of production.
Inside a Dark Store is an exhibition in two parts. The second part with Vika Kirchenbauer and a public program will take place in February 2023.
Inside a Dark Store
Gülsüm Güler
Erin Mitchell
Joshua Schwebel
Markus Zimmermann
Vika Kirchenbauer
12.2022–02.2023
Opening Sat. 17.12.22, 6-10 pm.
Open Sat, Sun. 1-6 pm (except 24.-25.12. and 31.12-01.01)
'The employee' by Joshua Schwebel is visible from the outside, every day from 4-10 pm (Pause between 24.12.22 - 06.01.23)
Funded by Presentations of Contemporary Visual Art of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe