An artistic exchange

Ana Finel Honigman

• Last Updated: February 01. 2009 8:30AM UAE / February 1. 2009 4:30AM GMT

The compliment often paid to the German capital by expatriates thrilled at the affordable lifestyle and creative international community is: “Berlin is like Paris in the 1950s.” And it is easy enough to make the argument that Berlin has much in common with the city of which Henry Miller said: “Wherever the eye falls in Paris there is colour, irregularity, whimsy, individuality, together with all the evidences of age and use, the patina of life lived.”

The artistic relationship between the two cities has long been a source of fascination. After the Pompidou Centre opened in Paris in 1977, one of the earliest exhibitions it hosted was Paris-Berlin 1900-1930, which sought to examine the links between the arts scenes of the two capitals in the early 20th century.

These artistic links are currently the subject of a project involving 11 top Berlin galleries and 13 leading galleries in Paris. In an exchange programme organised by the French embassy in Germany, the qualities that define each city’s art scene are demonstrated in a striking series of shows.

It is not only differences that are emphasised. As part of the exchange, Berlin’s Galerie Jan Wentrup has been hosting a selection of work by five artists from Paris’s Kamel Mennour. The gallerists met last year at Art Brussels and, as Tina Wentrup explained, “As we both liked each other, we decided to use the gallery exchange to intensify the relationship.”

The exhibition, which closed yesterday, included Christine Rebet’s drawings, Marie Bovo’s photography, Camille Henrot’s sculpture and Pierre Malphettes’s metal and concrete sculptures. Seamlessly included beside the other artists were luminous light sculptures by Claude Levêque, who will be representing France at the upcoming Venice Biennale. From the hand of the highly established yet still experimental mid-career artist representing his country on the art world’s most prestigious stage, Levêque’s humble and poetic minimalist neon sculptures glowing in the Jan Wentrup space provide a shimmering example of Paris’s mature artistic identity.

From Friday, Parisian galleries will return the favour, hosting Berlin artists in a group of shows that run until Feb 15. Berlin is best known and admired for its youthful verve. The artists that the Kamel Mennour will show in Paris are comparatively younger than those the gallery sent to Berlin, yet they present sophisticated and challenging work. Of the four, Christian Andersen’s sleek, strong minimalist sculptures fit well with contemporary Parisian taste for elegant minimalism, whereas Pablo Alonso’s ironically baroque sculptures in material such as acrylic, lacquer, marker, foam and wood are more typical of Berlin’s wilder aesthetic.

A more playfully explicit work about the two cities is Ace Zentz’s burnt metal and iron chain sculpture, Paris is Burning, which Berlin’s Galerie Micky Schubert is showing at Paris’s Gaudel de Stampa.

In Berlin, a series of nine large-format drawings by the late Parisian littérateur, translator and draughtsman Pierre Klossowski at the carlier gebauer gallery offered a brilliant vision of Parisian art at the height of its vitality. The older brother of the artist Baltus, Klossowski is little known outside France but revered in Paris. His dream-like drawings are a compelling introduction to a figure whose work is only now awakening interest outside his home county. Though Klossowski has passed away, the inclusion of his work in the Paris/Berlin exchange demonstrates how both cities can further the growth of interest in a diverse range of European artists.