POTSE 68.
CIRCLE CULTURE GALLERY MOVES TO NEW HORIZONS
New horizons are rising and we are in love with the New. “Skate and Destroy! Skate and Create!” was a key statement of the late 1980s Skate Rock culture. A time where subcultures where organized in groups of individuals cultivating true innovation in their very own right and style, inventing new ways of life. Back then the kids created sub-cultural scenes to differentiate, to be loud and to make a statement against the establishment: something which today has been assimilated first by pop culture and later eaten up by mass consumption and neo-liberal media democratization. Urban subcultures as we knew them in the second part of the 20th century have mostly dissolved. Maybe one of the last iconic sub-cultural urban movements is the street art movement since the change of the century. Like the icons of skateboard culture in the 1980s, we believe in the radical philosophy of free innovation: You must rethink blank canvasses to be able to build on your own history and to create evolution.
We are proud that we had the good fortune to be a core part of Urban Art’s historical development, specifically in relation to curatorial and academic practice. Analytical exhibition programs such as “The Urban Artist I +II” and “Berliner Strasse I+II” in dialogue with the Humboldt University Berlin as well as “Abstract expressionism in Urban Art“ and “Beautiful Losers” by Aaron Rose and Christian Strike were corner stones of our curatorial work. We created a platform which was the beginning and later the home of international careers and a place where tens of thousands of visitors experienced the results of revolutionary artistic challenges, artistic genius and artistic struggle.
Our personal understanding of contemporary art has diversified and evolved over the past 12 years. The focal point remains on fine artists influenced by the history of urban subcultures, but we have a passion for contemporary arts of all categories. From self-taught to academic positions, we continue working with exemplary artists from varied backgrounds. In the legacy of artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer and Keith Haring, these positions embody the research of alternative art concepts, techniques and aesthetics of their own time without necessarily pleasing the trends of the international art market.
Circle Culture Gallery’s start in its new location will honor the diversity of new contemporary fine art. For the inaugural exhibition approximately 30 selected artists from all over the world will be invited to present a key piece of their recent work.
We will introduce you to an extraordinary space in Potsdamerstrasse 68 in Berlin, Tiergarten. A home created for the exciting new projects we want to share with you in the forthcoming years. This area of Berlin perfectly expresses who we are and how we see ourselves. It is an unsophisticated part of Berlin positioned right in the middle of Germany’s capital: Next to the monumental New National Gallery built by Bauhaus Director, Mies van der Rohe and a short walk from the red light district of Kurfürstenstrasse. You will find us in the backyard of a Gründerzeit building in the cross section between Staatsbibliothek, Kulturforum, tabletop dance bars, the Philharmonic and culturally diverse grocery stores. The abundant contrast of the scenery of cheap hotels next to high fashion stores and international galleries creates a unique and authentic urban space where high and low cultures are in bed with one another. Please feel warmly welcome.
Johann Haehling von Lanzenauer
