POLYPHONIC VIEWS
Group Show
Part of Spatial Festival & Berlin Art Week
CURATED BY
PASSAGE
Group Show
Part of Spatial Festival & Berlin Art Week
CURATED BY
PASSAGE
The Funkhaus, Berlin
12.09.25 - 05.10.25
12.09.25 - 05.10.25
This work presents a collection of drawings, notes, timesheets, and reference photography from Marcus Nelson’s studio archive from 2021–25. Sealed beneath the reinforced glass of two security doors – found on the streets of Berlin – Contained (I,II), documents the process of making, by preserving the ephemera generated from a restless mind. Moments of violence, vulnerability, physical performance and emotional release appear and disappear under the visual noise of its entirety, all while trapped within the negative space of the object’s facade. In this work, Nelson asks how certain urban structures might support or inhibit our sense of self and what we choose to present to the external world.
Physically integrated within the walls of the Funkhaus, Berlin, Maskenfreiheit is a site-specific installation exploring the emotional disguises we wear in our daily lives to conform to societal expectations. Laughter is often a persona we present to the exterior world in order to fit in, masking our true feelings. Specifically made to fit within the buildings stark interior, the figures rendered in the diptych become part of the structure that contains them, exploring how urban structures and societal conformities frame and fragment our true self: our real emotions.
Chronicling the residue of the streets, by traversing his local area, Nelson uncovers objects that become documents of his direct environment and his existence within it. Framed within the predetermined form a metallic door, Paranoid Architecture, unites ideas of the physical body with the mechanical; questioning our true sense of autonomy in an environment bound and ordered by structural interventions.
Exhibition views:
Exhibition text:
Polyphonic Views, explores the abstract potential of performance in the absence of a physical act. The exhibition brings together 36 artists, each presented through a unique installation, forming a parcours of immersive encounters across the brutalist expanse of the Shedhalle at Funkhaus Berlin. The exhibition is part of this year’s Spatial Festival, a pioneering celebration of the Spatial Arts that treats space itself as a medium, using sound as the gateway to immersive, collective experience, with performances, installations, and technologies that dissolve the boundaries between audience and artwork.
Juxtaposing the productions of Spatial, each work presented in ›Polyphonic Views‹ serves as residue, vessel, or echo, whether bearing the physical imprint of a past gesture, implicating the viewer into an interpretive encounter, or acting out its own subtle choreography through substance and form. Together, they compose a landscape where performance is everywhere and nowhere, distributed across materials, minds, and moments, reevaluating what it means to witness and to be present.
The exhibition gives form to a layered, resonant experience that reflects the many voices of contemporary practice. It runs for three weeks, accompanied by a series of live events and activations in collaboration with Monom, in a space where echoes of the past meet the pulse of the future.
Exhibiting artists:
Genesis P-Orridge, Liang Fu, Ross Alexander Payne, Nik Nowak, Felix Kiessling, Roberto Rivadeneira Hermann Nitsch, James Leyland Kirby, Richie Culver, Kieran Leach, Olaf Metzel, Allen Golder Carpenter, Joshua Tarelle, Reid Mauricio, Alejo, Lukas Heerich, Mathis Altmann, Irving Ramó, Anastasia Shivrina, Julian Charrière, Marcus Nelson, Amrita Dhillon, Cornel Brudascu, Anne de Vries, Christian Jankowski, Lea Bouton Rafa Silvares, Tobias Spichtig, Philip McHugh Johannes Seluga, Ivan Seal, Ju Young Kim, Anna Uddenberg, Jean-Baptiste Durand, Emmanuel Massillon, Alexei Cerrone, Julius von Bismarck, Gozié Ojini, Hannah Rose Stewart, Anide.
︎ Passage