Thu, Apr 13, 2006 - Page 15 News List

Berlin Biennial makes art fit, anywhere

The curators of this year's Berlin Biennial have broken the rules by exhibiting artists' work in apartments, a ballroom, a shuttered school, a former horse stable, a church and a cemetery

By Steven Henry Madoff  /  NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , BERLIN

"You know, we say art doesn't go bad, it doesn't rot like food," Gioni said. "Art used to be about making something eternal. Now it's about a product with programmed obsolescence, almost with an expiration date."

"But what we came to understand in Berlin were the incredible layers of history and all the different ways that artists work and show here -- not just in institutions, but in temporary spaces, apartments," he said.

"We realized that we could build a show out of the whole street, with artists from many generations, a show whose spaces capture 250 years of life, not just the vacuum of a gallery's white cube, as if nothing came before."

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