Despite the hand that 2020 has dealt thus far, this year’s Berlin Art Week and postponed edition of Gallery Weekend Berlin are set to kick off in nearly full swing on September 9th and 11th, respectively. There may not be any boisterous dinners or crowded openings in the traditional sense, but a plethora of noteworthy exhibitions, talks, screenings and award ceremonies will be taking place digitally and physically, with day-long openings where you can—wait for it—actually see the art on the walls. Without further ado, here are some of the most promising shows that should be at the top of your itinerary for the 2020 iterations of Berlin Art Week and Gallery Weekend Berlin.

Let’s begin with the most sprawling and complex of them all: the 11th Berlin Biennial (BB11). Helmed by a team of South-American curators—María Berríos, Renata Cervetto, Lisette Lagnado, and Agustín Pérez Rubio—this edition of the Biennale has been envisioned as a series of lived experiences that evolve as a process. As such, the show already started to unfold over the course of the past year through three exhibitions-cum-experiences, deemed “moments” by the curators and titled “exp. 1,” “exp. 2,” and “exp. 3.” Each of these moments attempted to learn from and build sustainable relationships with the participating artists and projects as well as with the city and people of Berlin. Having wrapped up “exp. 3” earlier this summer, the stage is now set for the “epilogue,” which opened on September 5th. Titled “The Crack Begins Within”—words taken from a poem by Iman Mersal—the epilogue is an exercise of mutual recognition, an acknowledgement of the cracks in our systems, of those broken by them and their struggles. Works by artists like Pacita Abad, Noor Abuarafeh, Deanna Bowen, Francisco Copello, Cian Dayrit, Käthe Kollwitz, Katarina Zdjelar, and many others will be spread throughout KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Gropius Bau, daad Galerie, and ExRotaprint.

BB11 is a staple of Berlin Art Week’s official agenda, which also includes institutional exhibitions like “Magical Soup” at Hamburger Bahnhof. Featuring work by artists ranging from Nam June Paik to Lawrence Weiner to Pipilotti Rist to Anne Imhof, Nicole Wermers, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Christine Sun Kim, Sandra Mujinga, and many others, the show takes the intersection of sound, image, and social space as its starting point and goes on to explore the power with which these medias can create, reveal or hide reality. The works on view will feature precise observations, forms of radical self-expression, and deliberate the deconstruction of identity. While at Hamburger Bahnhof, it’s also worth visiting Katharina Grosse’s much buzzed about exhibition, “It Wasn’t Us” (the installations are so large that it would be nearly impossible to miss anyway!).

Also part of Berlin Art Week is POSITIONS Art Fair, the last remaining commercial fair in Berlin in the fall. (For those of you who may not have heard, in December 2019, Art Berlin announced the cancelation of all future editions.) However, in lieu of Art Berlin, and in reaction to the nonexistence of most physical fairs this year, gallerist extraordinaire Johann König has come up with his own: the Messe in St. Agnes. His namesake gallery, housed in the titular brutalist church in Kreuzberg, is set to host its second fair during Art Week and Gallery Weekend, presenting a high-profile selection of works from both the primary and secondary markets. The showcase will be accompanied by a series of exclusive dinners, concerts, readings, and panel discussions—but unless you happen to be a collector or König’s personal friend, good luck getting on the list.

Another experimental and majorly buzz-worthy initiative is the Boros Foundation’s collaboration with Berghain, the city’s most legendary club. Due to obvious reasons, Berlin’s clubs are indefinitely shuttered, but with an exhibition titled “Studio Berlin,” the primary spaces of Berghain, itself a former electricity plant, will be reenergized with recently created and newly commissioned works by over 100 contemporary artists who live and work in the German capital. The point of the show, the Boros Foundation says, is to “reflect upon the current status and the shifts in art and society and to give artists in Berlin a platform to present their work.”

The Boros aren’t the first to present an exhibition with such a goal; Thomas Demand recently curated “local talent” at Sprüth Magers, another group exhibition of newly created work by Berlin-based artists. In addition to Covid-19-inflicted restrictions, it is likely these exhibitions were born in part out of a desire to re-establish Berlin as an artworld captial—a standing that was challenged by the flood of announcements of private collectors leaving the city and taking their collections with them. Despite, or perhaps rather in spite of, the reasonings behind these shows, we’ve been more than happy to see the work of the artists who live and work within the city. We can’t wait to see work by Olafur Eliasson, along with other blue-chip names like Elmgreen & Dragset, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Rosemarie Trockel, as well as by younger artists such as Jesse Darling, Raphaela Vogel, Anna Uddenberg, and Katja Novitskova. If you’ve always wanted to go to Berghain but lived in fear of the famously strict door policy and hours-long queue, “Studio Berlin” is your chance—but be sure to book tickets online in advance.

Continuing in the collaborative and vacated-industrial-space spirit, seven Berlin galleries are teaming up to host the exhibition “K60” at Wilhelm Hallen, a 3000-square-meter former iron foundry in Reinickendorf. The participating galleries include alexander levy, BQ, ChertLüdde, Klemm’s, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Plan B, and PSM, who will present works of all sizes and scales—we expect works to extend far beyond what we would see in any of these galleries’ white cube spaces—by artists like Catherine Biocca (who will have a concurrent solo show at PSM), Sol Calero, Keltie Ferris, Kasia Fudakowski, Guan Xiao, Rachel Monsov, Pieter Schoolwerth, Ran Zhang, and Felix Kiessling, among others.

But if hearing the name “Olafur Eliasson” was more exciting for you than “former electricity plant” or “former iron foundry,” you’re in luck: Eliasson will also have a solo exhibition at neugerriemschneider, opening as part of Gallery Weekend. Titled “Near future living light,” the show will present newly created works that continue the artist’s ongoing investigation of perception, illusion, and optical phenomena. He’ll present three projected light installations, as well as a composition crafted from hand-blown glass, and a series of 36 watercolors. Parallel to Eliasson, the gallery will present works by Isa Genzken made throughout the last four decades.

Other noteworthy exhibitions opening as part of Gallery Weekend include those at Klemm’s, Buchmann Galerie, Esther Schipper, Klosterfelde Edition, Mehdi Chouakri, and Wentrup. In Kreuzberg, Klemm’s will present “MANIAC,” an exhibition by Émilie Pitoiset, an artist and choreographer who works with media ranging from dance, music, and performance to photographic prints, video, and installation. The works in “MANIAC” specifically explore the violence engendered by dance marathons, which have taken place since the Great Depression and continue through the present day.

Also in Kreuzberg will be Buchmann Galerie's presentation of new paintings by Clare Woods. The works in "If Not Now Then When" were primarily made during the intense period of isolation during lockdown and the imagery is based on photographs—some her own, others found. By cropping and editing the original photographs in the drawing process, Woods alters the form and brings them to the edge of figuration and, in turn, legibility.

Over in Tiergarten, Esther Schipper will show new work by Ugo Rondinone and Philippe Parreno. Presented in a space adjacent to the gallery’s primary location, Rondinone’s show “nuns + monks” will continue his exploration of the dual reflection between the inner self and the natural world through sculpture and the use of stones, while Parreno’s exhibition, “Manifestations,” “connects ‘things’ that, a priori, had nothing to do with one another; ‘things’ that allow themselves to be summoned by repetitions, synchronicities, signals, or singularities,” the press release says. These things, it continues, “all manifest themselves in a regime of alternating presence and absence, appearance and disappearance, a system of pulsations, fragments, fleeting flashes, intermittences; which, according to French philosopher Bruno Latour, all suggest the occult.”

Just down the street from Esther Schipper, Wilhelm Klotzek’s exhibition “Katzen & Architektur” at Klosterfelde Edition will address the disasters and curiosities of life, art, and architecture through his miniature maquettes. Visitors will encounter everything from the “dirty corners” of the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station to the Humboldt Forum’s staff entrance to the front window of an exquisite bookshop. Galerie Tobias Naehring will concurrently present Klotzek‘s three-chanel video projection “Das architektonische Trio.”

Further west, in Charlottenburg, Mehdi Chouakri will present a “Shame,” a new body of work by Sylvie Fleury, at both its Fasanenplatz and Mommsenstraße locations. Using readymades in the tradition of Duchamp, Fleury critiques the phenomenon of superficiality in contemporary culture and infuses each work with provocative feminist connotations, disrupting the patriarchal western art historical canon of minimal and conceptual art.

Around the corner from “Shame,” be sure to visit “Tell me a Tale,” a show presented by Wentrup in “external rooms” near the gallery’s primary space. (Yes, this concept of “off-site but nearby” does indeed seem to be a recurring exhibition design this year; perhaps the galleries are looking to make up for exhibition time lost to the lockdown.) This group exhibition takes its title from British singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka’s 2012 song of the same name and aims to present work by artists—among them, Nevin Aladağ, Natalie Ball, Jerrell Gibbs, Sophie von Hellermann, Caitlin Keogh, Florian Meisenberg, Devan Shimoyama, and Francis Upritchard—who depict various processes of “telling tales,” or conveying narratives.

If you’re searching for something farther away from the beaten gallery path, then look no further than Berlin’s numerous project spaces. Every year during Berlin Art Week, the Project Space Award celebrates the best of the best and this year is no different. The award ceremony on September 10th will honor the exhibition programs of brick-and-mortar spaces as well as more conceptual initiatives, including Arts of the Working Class, bi’bak, Cashmere Radio, Crystal Ball, Display, Kunstasphalt / Galerie Maifoto, Peles Empire, oqbo | raum für bild wort und ton, The Watch, and Trust. In addition to the award ceremony and socially distanced soft openings, you can also sign up for free bike tours to all of the award winners’ spaces around the city.

This incomprehensive compilation of exhibitions is just a place to start: Berlin Art Week and Gallery Weekend Berlin 2020 extend much further, into the digital realm and beyond. We must admit that we’ll certainly miss the bustling openings and the lower probability of chance encounters (not to mention the inability to meet many of the exhibiting artists who will be installing their shows remotely via Zoom), but hey, at least we can encourage you to leave the screen and explore the city’s rejuvenated art scene—something that three months ago we wouldn’t have thought possible.