As some of you already know we are right in the middle of our new group exhibition Fantastic Playground Berlin that you can still visit until Saturday at the Marcell von Berlin Flagship Store on Friedrichstraße 172. We have been planning this show for a long time now and we still can’t believe that it finally materialized, and it looks so much more amazing than we ever could have wished for.
This exhibition is really special to us because for the first time we had a theme that allowed us to create something like a retrospective of our work for iHeartBerlin for the past 15 years. Berlin is a playground of ideas – this has always been an important theme for us as we featured all these wonderful and inspiring projects from different creative scenes that make up Berlin. It’s so diverse and fun and colorful. To us, it’s the essence of Berlin and why this city is so special. It feels like everyone can find their space on this wild playground.
In this show, we are uniting for the first time artists from different disciplines including illustration, photography, sculpture, street art, and design and we’re bringing together the worlds of nightlife, architecture, pleasure, voguing, comics, ceramics, food, performance, drag and so much more. This is also our most culturally diverse show with artists from Ukraine, Denmark, Colombia, Venezuela, Syria, Isreal, Spain, Italy, France, UK, USA, Portugal, Australia, Germany of course, and a few more.
It’s always quite nerve-wracking when you are putting a show together with such different artworks because you never know how it will all look together. But we are so pleased with the final show, especially since it looks so amazing in the beautiful Marcell von Berlin Flagship Store. The response from our visitors so far has been so positive that it really makes us proud.
The opening on Saturday was a very special highlight for us and might very well have been the most amazing event of our history of many events. We had invited a group of performers to create immersive experiences for the guests throughout the night: You could paint the drag queen Santana Sexmachine, get make-up from Stevie Stevie, have a chat with a crazy old lady character played by Guttergucci, get an introduction into voguing by ballroom members Darwin and Maurice, and listen to the stories of Burlesque performer Chiqui Love. Later in the night we also had stunning performances on the pole by Pole Robyn and Chiqui, as well as a belly dance show by the one and only Darvish. And I’m not exaggerating when I say: people were gagged.
photos: Rafael Medina
Of course, we have a lot of wonderful individuals and institutions to thank for this exhibition and for this amazing opening night: First of all, we wanna thank the Bezirksamt Mitte, Visit Berlin, and Mttr Agency for the great opportunity to do this, we really appreciate the trust they all had in us. We also wanna thank the entire team of Marcell from Berlin who has been so supportive in letting us turn their amazing space upside down. We wanna thank all of the participating artists and performers, you are the essence of this show, the essence of iHeartBerlin, and the special ingredient that makes Berlin so unique.
We wanna thank our sponsors BRLO and Zubrowka Vodka for supplying us with their delicious drinks. We wanna thank our team and our friends that helped us turn our idea into a reality: Nick, Omar, Martin, Hossam, Giulio, Baran, Eleonora, Esper, Lyza, Leyla, and Freddie. A special thank you also goes out to our DJ Shira Kela for creating the soundtrack of the night and Caris from C+ for serving her delicious conscious vegan food.
And of course, we want to thank all of you who came to the opening and the exhibition. You made the experience special with your good vibe and enthusiasm for our Fantastic Playground Berlin.
You can still visit the show at Friedrichstr. 172 (upstairs) until Saturday, June 11th, Tue-Fri 10-19h and Sat 10-17h and admire (and even purchase) the work from:
Kseniya Apresyan, Josefine Aspvik, Mischa Badasyan, Laura Breiling, Dorit Bialer, Javier Alejandro Cerrada, Annique Delphine, Luke Embden, Sophia Halamoda, Alessandra Mannisi, Rory Midhani, Nicola Napoli, Jessie Omamogho, Joseph Wolfgang Ohlert, Bruno Pinto da Cruz, Richard Quittenton, Benedikt Rugar, Andrej Russkovskij, Various & Gould, Very Ugly Plates, Xuehka
