Gropius Bau – A New Experience

In the atrium a site-specific installation by Chiharu Shiota, internationally renowned for her complex installations crafted from webs of yarn, will be shown as part of the exhibition And Berlin Will Always Need You. The large-scale installation Beyond Memory will be the first of a series of artworks hosted within the atrium beginning in March 2019.

Beba, the new restaurant at the Gropius Bau, is a partnership between Cynthia Barcomi, Shani Leiderman and Infarm. The creative and colourful, vegetable-focused menu is inspired by ancient Jewish cuisines from around the world. The restaurant features a beautiful indoor vertical garden with a large assortment of herbs and leafy greens, harvested minutes before serving.

The Walther König Bookshop, which has grown to become an integral part of the Gropius Bau, reopens at the start of the 2019 exhibition season. Alongside postcards, prints and a selection of artistic shop items, König continues to focus on presenting a wide variety of books ranging from international exhibition catalogues on art and photography, architecture and fashion, to international contemporary discourse. Furthermore, the Walther König Bookshop curated the exhibition Museum in My Head. Artist Books – Walther König Bookshop, which acknowledges the artist book as an art object in and of itself that produces special forms of knowledge and creation.

For the opening, the Gropius Bau’s new artist in residence, Otobong Nkanga, will present the third part of her project, Carved to Flow, a model for a self-sustaining artwork. During her residency, the Gropius Bau will become the hub of this ongoing project, which began at documenta 14 in 2017 with a lab, a public programme and the production of a marbled soap, O8 Black Stone. Throughout the project’s three phases – The Laboratory, Warehouse and Distribution and Germination – Otobong Nkanga explores how body and landscape are interdependent, and consequently how they are affected by extractive capitalism. The third phase Carved to Flow: Germination will unfold in Otobong Nkanga’s ground-floor space at the Gropius Bau.