BOULEVARD | PINGUIN-CAFE (2023)

Berlin, tragically, is a city ripe for such a line of inquiry: time has been hard on this town. Its ruins sit atop of other ruins. Political ideologies are razed, resuscitated, and renovated by different iconoclasts acting over the last century. While people and ideas may be mobile, one does not think about buildings or architecture as such—and yet it encapsulates the key messages of a society and its ideologies. Parts of Boulevard I Pinguin-Café (2023), an assemblage of found pieces of a former GDR cafe is like a deconstructed monument, a ready made assembled from remaining parts borrowed from Dresden. As in Phantasma, it is hard to come to envision the original state of the place. So we are left with guessing about what was saved and what was tossed away, thinking about its absence.

- Kate Brown

Memories of a place I have never been...Part II, HOTO Gallery,
Boulevard | Pinguin-Café (2023), sizes variable, steel