POP 284 Friday 7 May 2010

Today’s POP is Becky, writing from the bottom of Soho House’s swimming pool in Berlin.

The whole office decided to take the weekend off and fly to Berlin to celebrate the end of the ash (or is it?) and go see some great art at the Berlin Gallery weekender. First stop was at Haunch of Venison gallery for Damien Hirst and Michael Joo’s  Have You Ever Really Looked into the Sun? The after party and dinner was held in the brand new Berlin Soho House which opened for one weekend only to entertain Hirst, Joo and their guests.
 

There was a beautiful and international crowd, a rocking DJ, champagne on tap and a few of us managed to end up at the bottom of the pool. This is where I stayed  for the rest of the weekend. Can someone please come and help me out?
 
Before the fall I managed to catch up with Michael and Damien to ask them some pure POP questions.

 
POP: Can you tell me why you decided to collaborate together?

DH: I’ve known Mike for 20 years and we have always talked about doing a show together, usually in the wee hours, drunk out of our minds. It was a long time coming but had to be done.
 

MJ: I think we were both thinking about it last year when Harry (Blaine) saw my show in New York at Anton Kern. In the end, Damien suggested it to both of us and we curated it together. 

POP: What is your affinity with Berlin?

DH: I had a great time there and my eldest son Connor was made in Berlin. Before Berlin, I lived in a council flat in London, and when I went to live in Berlin it was for a fellowship where they put me up in a big beautiful house and two studios, one for me and one for my girlfriend. They gave me money to make art but I spent most of it partying.

MJ: I decided to become an artist after living and working as a science intern in Austria and Germany in the mid 80's. I visited Berlin often in the 90's and watched it transform.

POP: The weekend was an art lovers wet dream. Did you see anything that blew your mind?

DH: I saw a piece by Julian Opie, a twin video piece in a group show that my old tutor Michael Craig Martin curated. I also went to the Pergamon Museum which is totally mind blowing. Those dead guys so knew how to make art.

MJ: The show at Neuger Riemschneider, Beuys at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Olafur Eliasson's installation, Christoph Waltz outside of the cool show at Michael Fuchs'. The Holocaust Memorial.

POP: Can you explain the thinking behind the room with the balls, the tree, and so on?

DH: From my perspective and from Mike's perspective it's very different, the fly painting and the whole room works like a celebration of man trying to get to grips with his environment. Let's Eat Outdoors Today is like a very very bad picnic, and Mike’s tree fallen down is like the end of civilisation. The ball piece “The Battle Between Good and Evil" as the title says explains itself, there’s a lot going on in that room.

MJ: Transformation and Life. Circles transforming into squares (the tree), black into white, eggs becoming flies, image becoming sculpture, breath becoming ice, memory transforming into reality, death into life. The basics. 

POP: Have you ever really looked at the sun?

MJ: All the time.