Salon RBH

The landscape of a city should very much reflect the landscape of the art scene it hosts. Opened in 2017, the Reinbeckhallen had the aim of creating a place where artists and creative people could settle, come into dialogue with each other, and form a network to establish Oberschöneweide as a cultural location. Today, the Reinbeckhallen and the neighboring grounds are home to a conglomerate of artists and cultural workers, non-profit organizations, workshops, and galleries. For Berlin Gallery Weekend, Stiftung Reinbeckhallen and Bode Projects invoke the multi-layered production and exhibition site Reinbeckhallen to present what this cultural hub can stand for.

Bode Projects presents the exhibition Salon RBH which is defined only by the creative. The exhibition aims to be, not so much about a specific theme, but rather an insight into the work of the participating artists. The exhibition features the work of Patrick Alston, Darin Cooper, Ryan Cosbert, Mira Dancy, Dana James, Alteronce Gumby, Riley Holloway, Miguel Machado, Hasani Sahlehe and Chris Watts.

The exhibition runs from April 29 until May 15, 2022. We have extended opening hours during Berlin Gallery Weekend and look forward to see you on Friday (12-8pm) or Saturday/Sunday (11am-5pm).

 

The Stiftung Reinbeckhallen shows the solo exhibition Towards Abstraction by Nils Ohlsen. The show provides a comprehensive overview of his oeuvre which focuses on watercolors and will be shown in the project room. In addition, the Stiftung, in collaboration with HTW Berlin, presents Cinemiracle - Experimentelle Kurzfilme, 7 short films by students of communication design. The short films will be shown in the lounge of the exhibition hall. A small selection of photographic editions by the artists Kurt Buchwald, Andreas Rost and Werner Zellien rounds up the Foundation‘s presence in the Salon RBH.

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Patrick Alston (b. 1991, US) focuses on gesture and materiality. Through abstraction, Patrick Alston’s work forms a reflection on socio-politics, identity, language, and the psychology of color. His re-contextualized subjects, rich and complex compositions are expressed through gestural mark making and the combination of various materials.

 

Darin Cooper (b. 2000, US) is a multidisciplinary artist. When creating work, Cooper tends to think about the diaspora of African American family in the South. Redefining the notion of what family is or what it is supposed to look like, a family that isn’t defined by whiteness. Southern culture has also influenced his art practice. Through his materials, Cooper creates portals to connect the viewer to a world that they might not know exist.

 

Ryan Cosbert (b. 1999, US) is a painter, installation, and mixed media artist whose research-based practice focuses on abstract works, along with political and historical narratives. Through color and mixed media, her paintings and sculptures investigate depth and composition to create a relationship between the external and internal implications of the African diaspora.

 

Mira Dancy (b. 1979, US) is a contemporary painter whose practice also extends to neon light installations, wall paintings, and projected images. Deflecting from the historically male-led cannon of the female figure, Dancy’s vibrant works challenge the usual static male gaze and generate a series of moving images that reconfigure our understanding of the nude.

 

Dana James (b. 1986, US) works primarily in painting. In her practice, James playfully challenges viewers' notions of line and shape by contrasting materials and processes next to one another. She creates a spectrum of pastel-toned colors which she applies to create notes of contradiction in darker, vivid fields of color in fractured multi-panel constructions.

 

Alteronce Gumby (b. 1985, US) explores the visual and societal references of color and form. His paintings subvert traditional understandings of light and color through the nuanced application of glass and oil paint on panel. This unique technique stems from his attempt to constantly redefining color and materiality’s meaning and connotations. The fluorescent and chromatic spectrum of his iridescent color expands the notions through which we perceive form and color, the subjectivity on identity, the materiality on earth and in cosmic space.

 

Riley Holloway (b. 1989, US) is best known for his dynamic practice with text and image, his perspective of wandering thoughts, fears, and struggle, and for speaking his mind with traditional drawing and oil painting techniques on canvas. His portraits have the canny sense of representing us and not-us. The artworks are an engaging mixture of rage and tranquility, motion and stillness, a distillation of the artist’s contradictions.

 

Miguel Machado (b. 1990, CU) approaches his work with antiquarian thoroughness and mixes motions and pictorial styles. He researches intensively and usually begins a painting with a short, self-written story which he starts to translate onto canvas. Employing oil painting as main medium, he also includes other mediums ranging from drawing and sculpture to animated film.

 

Hasani Sahlehe (b. 1991, Virgin Islands) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice consists of abstract paintings, installations, and performances that explore memory, migration and the supernatural. The artist draws influence from abstract expressionism and the visual language of urban art - especially the use of text, spirited colors and found materials. Sahlehe’s work distorts familiar imagery to contemplate the malleability of perception and regional customs.

 

Chris Watts (b. 1984, US) an abstract painter and mixed-media artist whose work interrogates social and personal narratives around embodiment, and understandings of the visible. Within his work, the artist seeks to analyze, re-examine and revise existing conventions by means of their abstract representation, and re-evaluation.