An Artist Talks with Oliver Pfeiffer, 13.01.2011., Tacheles,

Oliver Pfeiffer is a very talented musician. He has been playing for many years now in Berlin.He first studied in New York and lived there for 8 years. He had great Jazz teachers and plays moslty bass although he does play other instruments.

In Berlin he played with groups and composed and arranged his own music.

He sometimes needed to cut away from the artist scene and go and work for the fishing industry on a fishing boat.

Oliver see himself more as a craftsman more than a artist, and does not like all the fuss around the artist scene, "he is just doing his job" he says very simply.

Nevertheless he likes complexity and is fascinated by Philisophy. He has studied them all, from the Roman empire to contemporary thinkers, who feed his vision of Todays world.

He believes that Philosophy influences strongly the political and economical system.

He writes poems and short stories and also comics, he has admiration for French and Belge comics, and has had several publications.
We hope to have soon some readings of his texts in the next Forums organized for the Werkshau? See you there!

An Artist Talks, Petrov Ahner, Finissage" Burned Condition",04.11.2010, Tacheles

This new experience of solo show as art photographer here  in the Tacheles neue Gallery, was a great moment and Petrov Ahner is pleased that so many people have been able to see his works.

The Photographs were taken  after the destruction of the gallery in last february, Petrov took pictures of left over trash burnt objects and gave them a new life a new function.

This exhibiton states and shows how resistent a place like the Tacheles Arthouse can be. "We create art from destruction, we recreate from nothing" says Petrov.

The long fight the Tacheles arthouse  is experiencing at the moment, inspires artists to create and involve themselves into new directions.

Petrov has started to work with a young Mexican artist named Alain Lederzman, Orvar, who is 26 years old and has been showing his work currently in the "Sine Die" project room.

Both exhibitons are curated by the house curator Barbara Fragogna, with whom the artist has built a strong relationship.

Many recent projects have been initiated by her and have devellop thanks to her coaching and encouragements.

Petrov has also been collaborating with performance artist Miriam Wuttke and describes these new aspects of his works as "very exciting and new". His experience from the past of course, is a ground for his research, but he  is constantly trying to obtain a new vision of the portrait, or of the performance, and helps  photography  begin it's artistic function, and not only be a documentation of someone else's work, or performance. The photography itself becomes  an artwork.

He is preparing his next exhibition a series of portraits done in France of the illegal immigrants, who joined to fight for their right to stay and work in France. We were lucky to see a preview projection of beautiful individuals dignified by his camera. The status of the immigrant is viewed from a different angle and Petrov intentionaly took these portraits to make these immigrants shine and show their humanity. The portrait has always had a social function in our society, people of power and high social classes have had portraits done by famous artists, painters and photographers.

Here Petrov stands by a social group that is look down upon and helps the viewer become aware of a contemporary social situation.

An Artist Talks with Frederico Ballon, 23.12.2010, Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin.

Frederico Ballon creates his jewelry in reference to his roots and works with silver and copper and stones collected from travelling.

He has knowlegde about stones and their function on an anergetic level and his Bolivian education gives him a simple way of dealing with his craftworks: He has travelled alot through latin America and speaks also Portuguese:

He married and his wife is German so he naturally came to Europe and germany to work: He often shows and displays his creations on the famous Flea-Markets of Berlin, and has many in display in the Manufacture on the third floor of the Kunsthaus Tacheles.

He is also a musician and plays the congas with great pleasure, you can find him almost every day, and can have your dream jewelry made by him, if you like.:-)

An Artist Talks with Karen Haase, 06.01.2011, Tacheles Kunsthaus, Berlin

Karen Haase came to An Artist Talks. She first shared her passion for drawing, as a teenager she began to draw, and since then she has never stopped producing works, both paintings , drawings and performance art, as current medias. 
Her painting is influenced by Jason Pollock and Francis Bacon. And she did her studies in Art Therapy in the university, where she met Miryam Wuttke, and started to work performance art together.
They to begging with, shared a space in Berlin, where they created characters and themes.
Dr Haase is one of them and also Golden Haase .

The themes Karen explores are both visual and conceptual. They often relate to feminin ideals and dreams around relationships and marital life. The wedding is an enigmatic event, for her, where she likes to play both the groom and  the bride... Is this a seek  for success in love and life? We do not know, we can't tell? The viewer is left full of questions about his own values...
Karen often uses  sweet sugar in her performances: like the making of candy floss, or pouring sugar into little sweet boxes. It could be a way to show, that a little effort and concentration, or maybe even compromise, are necessary to achieve goals, and certainly a lot of patience...
She constructs her performance settings, and designs her costumes, mainly with white cotton or a white vail, in reference to the sweet softness of the sugar, the material is soft as well, and gives the same illusion of comfort and protection.


The use of the gold colour seems to be related to the value or symbolic, rather than the colour itself, "it is a way to give a visual value to things and object of everyday life", she says.
Her process in the performance is first visual, and then after intergrating an object, into the performance, it naturally leeds to another idea, and another, and creates her complete vision of the performance she is building. The objetcs and actions are related to one another, and like a path to follow, bring her to further actions and more ojects collected and created.

An Artist Talks with Samuel Sieber, 16.12.2010, Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin.

Samuel Sieber is a multi-talented artist. He shares his time between writing books, teaching in the university, writing songs and composing music, for his group the Mojados. He is also a painter, and his colourful naive palette comes to quite a suprise, since he has so many facettes in his work.

The singer can be dark and mysterious, with the Indie Rock style that clearly shows his taste for American pop rock music.

The writer is concerned by comtemporary social society problems and develops a view on our social systems and behaviours. His knowledge of history and philosophy gives him a strong base to the developement of his thought that he successfully conducts throughout the book "Mediale Provokationen". He is no afraid to have an opinion and say aloud what he thinks. He studies also within the university that gives him the possibilty to dialogue with the Youth.

The painter seems to be more in a fantasy world, were characters come out of a cartoon or are made up from a story book. He is alike a Douanier Rousseau, with wild animals in his compositions, bringing the human figure into the position of a mythical heroe, (Wildnis) .

 Next show on the 16th of January 2011, Passions Kirche Kreuzberg, Berlin!!!