BERLIN, GERMANY.- The curators of the 4th berlin biennial, Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick, have chosen to present the show, entitled “Of Mice and Men,” in a variety of untraditional locations. This edition of the berlin biennial will take place in both public and private spaces, all located on one street, Auguststraße, in Berlin’s Mitte district. The curators’ decision to seek out new, different and unusual sites for the 4th berlin biennial, much like their selection of artists, is one of the primary foundations of the exhibition. They chose sites, which both resonate and contrast with the works on view, providing a series of environments that are often charged with historical and symbolic references.

Literally stretching from a church to a cemetery, the show occupies private apartments, offices and other common places where people go about their daily lives, eating, working, playing and praying, “Of Mice and Men” is a journey across time and space, in which viewers are invited to experience art and the contexts in which works are presented, as if opening a series of time capsules. Each venue also projects a distinct image with which the artworks are then layered upon, building up a three-dimensional collage.

This approach to curating a biennial is loosely inspired by the tendency in Berlin to turn apartments into galleries and use temporary spaces for impromptu exhibitions and events. In combination with the artworks, the venues also reflect the atmospheres and tensions recurring throughout the exhibition. “Of Mice and Men,” in fact, tries to capture a sense of darkness and malaise, gravitating around questions of birth and loss, death and surrender, grief and nostalgia. Many of the places also evoke intimacy and reclusive states of mind, where collective history overlaps with personal traumas.

One of the core sites selected for the exhibition is the former Jewish School for Girls at Auguststraße 11-13, which has remained empty and unused for ten years. A silent witness of our times, the former school has survived almost 80 years of German history. Shut down by the Nazis in 1942, the school resumed its activities only after the war. During the former GDR it re-opened as the Bertolt-Brecht-Oberschule which closed in 1996. With its austere façade, the Jewish School dominates Auguststraße as a monolith conjured from the past, and as a memento for the future: in its interiors, life seems to have come to a sudden stand still.

Like the preceding editions of the berlin biennial, KW Institute for Contemporary Art is one of the thirteen venues for the exhibition. The access to the exhibition spaces would have been impossible without the help of a lot of friends, neighbors, collaborators and partners. We would like to thank all of them for their generosity and support in making the 4th berlin biennial possible.