Marina Roy: Hello to Berlin

During last decade, major art museums and galleries from New York, London and Berlin have opened satellite venues all over the world. As one of the instigators of this trend, the Guggenheim Museum already has branches in Berlin, Bilbao and Venice and is opening another in Abu Dhabi. Helsinki and Vilnius are also being scouted as sites for future Guggenheims. However, this type of development is not unique to leading museums: Apexart in New York initiated a new programming stream a few years ago devoted to organizing temporary exhibitions internationally, with the tongue-in-cheek name Franchise. Taking it further, Canadian curator Maxine Kopsa and Dutch colleague Krist Gruijthuijsen recently opened Kunstverein in an Amsterdam apartment. Related Kunstverein spaces have since opened in New York and Milan as well.

In line with these developments, Vancouver artist-run centre Or Gallery recently launched a satellite space in Berlin. The gallery has a rich tradition of international collaborations, such as Konstakuten in Stockholm, so this initiative is not as surprising at it might seem. Like Kunstverein in Amsterdam, Or Gallery Berlin is located in a former apartment. Nestled in Kreuzberg, the gallery is set within an area that’s home to an ever-increasing number of artists. “Canada’s vibrant network of artist-run centres has a long and acclaimed history of collaboration with organizations around the world,” states the press release sent out when the space opened in December, “yet Or Gallery Berlin stands as the first example of an international satellite space.”

The inaugural exhibition at Or Gallery Berlin is “What’s pushed out the door comes back through the window” by Vancouver artist, writer and teacher Marina Roy. Working across a wide range of media, Roy is recognized for animated videos where fantastical narratives intersect with art history and psychoanalytic theory. In 2010, she received the prestigious VIVA Award for her practice.

“What’s pushed out the door comes back through the window” examines aspects of the grotesque—a term derived from the word grotto, meaning small cave. The show is divided into three parts. The front room features sequential drawings of gruesome guts and playful pigs in which uncertain stories are unfolding; the back room presents two new video works, Che Vuoi? and Mineral Intelligence, with uncanny soundtracks by Graham Meisner; and the office nook hosts drawings on paperback books. I found myself lingering longest at Mineral Intelligence, a dreamlike lecture with dark, shrewd imagery that conveys the tense relationship between expression and repression in the most engaging way. However, I think this particular show would have worked better if the gallery space had been a cave-like apartment rather than a white cube. But that is a minor remark on this bold undertaking’s first display.

The streetside entrance to the new Or Gallery space in Berlin