The city and the jungle - two polar opposites - are brought together in a Berlin exhibition.A range of diverse works at KW Institute for Contemporary Art forms part of 2015 Berlin Art Week.The artists focus on images that the urban environments imprint on their inhabitants’ imagination, dreams and subconscious.The theme of entrapment in the “concrete jungle” of enormous conglomerations is prominent in Ute Adamczewski’s “La ville radieuse chinoise,” (2015, video). Adamczewski divides the screen of the video into two panels, enhancing the disproportion between the miniscule silhouettes of the citizens and the gigantic skyscrapers towering above them.Manon Awst and Benjamin Walther put the visitor in a position of a prisoner in their “Politics of Space,” (2014, sandblasted mirror). The work, which consists of an image of a railing overlapping a mirror, is especially poignant in light of the refugee crisis in Europe.As much as it can be viewed as a limiting and sterile place, the city can also offer its inhabitants a chance of an extravagant and decadent life; a space where people can pursue their innermost desires. Ulu Braun’s “The Park” (2011, 2 channel video projection), immerses the viewer in a carousel of heavily CGI-ed images, ranging from religious monuments, pornographic scenes and people playing sports. The ever-changing landscape in the video is both mesmerizing and revolting, depicting the city as a space where basic instincts have free reign over reason.The exhibition poses complex questions about the relationship between the city as a landscape, a form of natural environment, and a construct that is controlled and machine-like.The show is one of a series of events under a common theme “Stadt/Bild” (translated as “the image of the city”), presented by leading cultural institutions in Berlin as part of the art week. “Welcome to the Jungle” runs at KW Institute for Contemporary Art until November 15, 2015.
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